


The Gentle Sting

by jujubiest



Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: Background Monrosalee, Badass Villain!Adalind, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Post Season 6, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Finale, Romantic Coercion via Magic, Twinning Spell Aftermath, truth spell
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-06 20:09:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 39,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15893250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubiest/pseuds/jujubiest
Summary: In the aftermath of Zerstorer's defeat, Adalind begins to have strange and terrifying dreams about a clearing she's never been in, and a final battle that, for her, never took place. Worse, she begins to suspect that someone has put a spell on Nick. But when she goes to Rosalee for help and her worst fears are confirmed, it sets into motion a chain of events that none of them might survive.





	1. Dark Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> As much as I love Grimm, I wasn't all that happy with how the finale left things. I feel like there were a lot of loose ends left untied, and some writing decisions that weren't so great. So, this is my fix-it fic for that. I don't want to spoil anyone who doesn't want to be spoiled, but see notes at the bottom of this page for additional info on some of the things to look out for in this fic regarding ships and character deaths.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adalind is having troubling dreams. Eve returns to Portland after six months away.

_The trees seem to glower overhead, their spindly-fingered shadows stretching long and dark across the clearing. A cabin nestles among their bases, a dwarf among giants. Its empty windows impart a sense of foreboding, as if everything around her senses the horror coming ever closer._

_It’s too quiet. There should be crickets, and wind creaking its way through old bark and dry leaves. The baby should be crying. But the house remains as silent as it is dark._

_The landscape is picked out of the darkness in shades of green-gray, even her companions’ faces. Nick turns anxious eyes toward her, just as He steps out of the trees into the clearing: statuesque white face and golden hair the only bright splashes of color to be seen in any direction._

_His eyes find hers across the empty space, pull her gaze from Nick’s worried stare._

_Something changes._

_Suddenly everything that weighed on her mind seems far away. There is no worry, or pain. There’s no anxiety about the future, about her children, about the true feelings of the man who sleeps beside her at night. What are their names? What is hers? Meaningless, made-up words._

_The only word that matters is Power. It sparks beneath her skin like lightning, lovely and terrible in equal measure. Intoxicating. Terrifying. She feels her mouth widen into an old expression, barely familiar: a cold rictus grin she hasn’t worn for years now. There is no happiness behind it, but happiness does not matter either. It is the signal to those who oppose her that death isn’t coming: it is_ here _._

_She lifts her chin, raises her hands to the sky. The current beneath her skin crackles, surges. The man with the golden hair crumbles along with the staff in his hand, ash and splinters blown away on the wind before they can touch the scorched earth he stood on. The man beside her—his name, his name…it’s too far away for her to reach—draws in a sharp breath: awe and fear. He spins toward her and grabs her by the shoulders, calls out something that might once have been her name._

_But as soon as his fingers touch her, he begins to burn away. No screaming. No fight. There’s no time. She watches it as if in slow motion, but he’s gone before he has time to draw breath for a scream._

_The last things to go are his eyes, glimmering green through the darkness, hurt and betrayed. She’s laughing and laughing; she can’t seem to stop. Somewhere nearby, a baby is crying…_

* * *

 

Adalind opens her eyes with a start, blinking in confusion as the low, dingy ceiling of the bunker swims into clarity above her. She feels clammy and too warm at the same time. Sitting up slowly, she grimaces as she wipes at her face and pushes her sweat-damp hair away from her forehead, behind her ears. The horror of the dream lingers in her mind’s periphery, but the details are quickly slipping through her fingers, all the faster for how hard she tries to hold onto them.

It takes her a few moments to register that the sound of a baby crying followed her out of the dream. As soon as she does, it stops, and Nick comes into view with a bundle in his arms, bouncing gently and whisper-singing horribly off-key. She offers him a tired, apologetic smile.

“Sorry,” she says softly. “I was having a dream. I think I thought Kelly crying was part of it.”

“It’s fine,” Nick half-yawns, still bouncing. “He just needed changing.”

She can’t help but smile; Nick is so good with their son. He answers her smile with one of his own and joins her on the bed, re-positioning Kelly between them.

“Hey little guy,” Adalind whispers to their shared bundle. A sleepy cooing is all she gets for an answer, but her smile grows…and then goes almost too wide. Her face falls, part of the dream coming back to her.

“Nick,” she says slowly, leaning against him and keeping her voice soft, “when you came through the mirror, you said you’d done all of it before. That you and Eve had come through, and Zerstörer followed you?”

“Yeah,” he says. His voice sounds suddenly hollow, the way it always does when he talks about Zerstörer…which is not often. “He hunted us down, one by one. It was…it was terrible. First he killed Hank and Wu…then Eve died giving me a chance to run. The rest of us went to hide out in that cabin, way out in the woods…the one where I solved my first case as a Grimm.”

“Right,” she says. “The one at the edge of a little clearing, right? Like something out of a fairy tale…”

“Yeah…one of the dark, twisted originals,” he half-laughs darkly. “And he found us there. He wanted Diana…and Kelly. I had to watch him…he killed you right in front of me. And Renard. And Rosalee…then Monroe. And all I could do was…cry. And beg. For it not to be true. I’ve never felt so helpless.”

She slides an arm around his shoulders carefully and gives him a light squeeze. He leans into the touch, resting his chin on top of her head.

“I think I dreamed about it,” she says hesitantly after a moment. “Like I remembered it, only…I can’t, right? Not really. It didn’t happen for me.”

“I’m glad it didn’t happen for you,” he says fiercely. “It was horrible. Like all my worst nightmares were coming true at once.”

“I wish you didn’t have to remember it,” she murmurs, feeling herself growing sleepy again.

“You and me both.” He kisses the top of her head. “But you…you were so brave. You fought tooth and nail for them,” he indicates Kelly with a nod of his head. “For us.”

She’s silent, struck again by that almost-memory feeling from the dream.

“You never told me that before,” she whispers. He looks at her over Kelly’s head and smiles.

“I hate thinking about it,” he admits. “Even though it wasn’t real…or maybe I undid it. I still hate picturing what he did to you.”

She knows that, of course. She smiles sadly, snuggling closer into his side. The movement jostles Kelly slightly, and he fusses for a moment before settling back into sleep. She sheepishly stifles a yawn.

“We should probably put Kelly back to bed before we fall asleep with him in here with us.”

“I can do it,” Nick whispers, but she can tell he’s mostly asleep already. She smiles and takes Kelly from him, pressing a kiss to his forehead as she does. “Get some sleep, Nick.”

He opens his eyes all the way for just a moment, green and grey and full of things he’s never said to her.

“Thank you,” he breathes. And then he’s out, and she turns away to go put Kelly back in his crib.

“I love you,” she says to the empty air. There’s no answer from behind her, but it chases away some of the niggling uneasiness left over from the dream all the same.

* * *

 

“Nick, look out!”

Hank’s warning reverberates off the trees. Nick throws himself aside just in time for the Reaper’s scythe to miss his head by inches. He feels the wind from it ruffle his hair and suppresses a shudder. _That was too close._

Propelling himself in the direction of that brush of wind, he twists, thrusts out and up with the short sword in his left hand. The wet crunch followed by a dull, heavy thud tells him his blow hit home. He pulls back to survey the crumpled body of the former Reaper, whose head has vacated his shoulders and rolled a few feet away. Nick grimaces; no matter how many times he does it, he never quite gets used to the bloody aftermath of a beheading.

Monroe, on the other hand, seems completely unfazed. He bounds over to Nick with bright eyes and a wide smile, clapping him on the shoulder in congratulations.

“Good job, man…yeesh. Clean-up’s gonna be murder, though.”

From his lookout perch, Wu shouts down: “Hey, inappropriate jokes are my territory. Otherwise what am I doing here?”

“Keeping me company,” Hank calls from his hiding spot several yards away.

“Hey guys,” Nick cuts in. “Who wants to help me get rid of this mess?”

A flurry of “not it” sounds from all sides. He rolls his eyes and laughs. “Oh sure, make me do the wet work _and_ the clean-up.”

“I’ll help,” Someone says from behind him. He freezes, then turns to see the owner of the voice standing a few feet away. His face breaks into a delighted grin, and he closes the distance between them, pulling her into a tight hug.

“Eve! When did you get back into town!? And how did you find us all the way out here?”

“Just today,” she says, half-laughing and returning his embrace somewhat more reservedly. “I found Rosalee and Adalind at the spice shop, cooking up some kind of super complicated potion. They said you guys were out hunting a rogue Reaper. You weren’t that hard to track. You know, you really should work on that.”

Her face is serious, but her voice has a teasing note to it. Nick laughs.

“I’ll get right on that, as soon as these Reapers give us a moment’s peace.”

“Yeah, they’ve been a real pain in the ass lately,” Hank says, joining them. He pulls Eve out of Nick’s hug and into a one-armed version of his own. “Come here, girl! How’ve you been?”

“Great, Hank. Thanks for asking,” she says earnestly. “Glad to be back, actually.” She studiously doesn’t look at Nick as she says this, and changes the subject quickly.

“So what’s with these guys? I thought the Reapers had pretty much left Portland alone since Nick started shipping their heads back in boxes.”

“Well, yeah, they _did_ …” Wu says, joining them as well. He gives Eve a pat, but doesn’t subject her to anymore bear hugs. “Until the Royals all bit it and created a power vacuum that one of these nasty pieces of work is just _dying_ to fill.”

“Yeah,” Hank continues. “Ever since we more or less took out or chased off the Royals one by one, the rest of the Wesen world seems to think Portland is some kind of seat of power, now. Thus, whosoever takes the throne here—“

“Takes over for the Royals? You’re kidding,” Eve cuts in. Wu shakes his head.

“Believe me, I have never wished more than now that I _was_ kidding. But no. It seems like every other week we’ve got another Reaper—or Wesen—who would be king trying to kill our resident Grimm to assert their dominance.” He gives Nick’s shoulder a sympathetic pat.

“That’s…really messed up, even for Portland,” Eve says. “So what are you planning to do? Just keep beheading whatever shows up to challenge you?”

“Not exactly,” Nick says. “Come on, let’s clean this up and then go back to the spice shop. We’ll fill you in on everything.”

“Yeah,” interjects Hank, “and you can tell us what all you’ve been up to since you’ve been gone.”

They fall to the grisly task at hand, and Eve is grateful for the temporary lull in conversation. She’s a little surprised at how comfortable it all is, how familiar it feels after all these months away. She and Nick didn’t exactly part on good terms, and she had been a little nervous contemplating what kind of receptions was waiting for her.

But it seems that whatever was broken between them then has, at least for now, been mended.

 _Or maybe Nick’s just not in any hurry to open old wounds,_ a traitorous voice in her head intrudes. She shoves that thought away and finishes her part of the clean-up, then sets her mind to clearing out all those pesky emotions and just being in the moment for a while.

On the trip back to the spice shop, she kept her attention on the passing lines of trees, drinking in the impossible green of everything around them. The air feels cool and wet against her skin, smells like rain and moss when she breathes in deep. Just like always. She smiles.

It’s good to be home.

* * *

 

_Six Months Ago_

Eve walks swiftly toward the truck idling in Monroe and Rosalee’s driveway. Everything she owns—it isn’t much, after all—is already packed and ready to go, except for the bag slung over her shoulder. She tosses that into the passenger’s seat and walks around, so intent on her destination that she doesn’t even register Nick leaning against the driver’s side door until she reaches out to grab the handle and gets a fistful of his jacket instead.

“Nick,” she says tonelessly, pulling her hand back. She knows why he’s there, and if she ever finds out who told him, she’ll give them an earful…but for now she just wants him to move so that she can get out of here and avoid the painful, awkward conversation she knows is coming otherwise.

“You’re leaving,” he says, clearly striving to keep his voice as neutral as hers and failing; a faint accusatory note comes through instead.

“Yes.” She doesn’t look at him.

“Without saying goodbye?” Now he sounds hurt, and she _really_ does not want to do this.

“Would that make it easier?” She looks up at him finally, pins him with her stare, waits. He can’t quite meet her eyes.

“No,” he says finally. “Why?” He sounds so…pleading.

She sighs, giving up the faint hope that she might get out of Portland without having to hash this out. Thus resigned, she turns to join him in leaning against the warm, rumbling side of the truck.

“You know why,” she says softly. “I need some distance, from this place, from everything that happened, from—“

“From me,” he interrupts. “Come on, just say it. You’re running away from me. Because you...you know. The night I came back through the mirror. You guessed then?”

“What I know is that you love Adalind,” she says softly, painfully. “I know that despite everything, you don’t want to do anything to hurt her. So…I think maybe you need some distance from me as well.”

He’s quiet for a long time. Guiltily, she allows herself to enjoy it. She pretends, for just a moment, that the silence is companionable, not choked with all these unsaid things between them.

Emotions are still something she has to actively _allow_ herself to feel, sometimes. She thinks it’s safer, better, to keep them under tight control as much as possible. But she’s never been great at staying in check when it comes to Nick, not even when she was HW’s wind-up assassin. She knows she should not allow herself to enjoy the cool night air, the warm weight of Nick’s shoulder pressed against her own, the fog from their breath mingling in the air.

But she does enjoy it, because she doesn’t know when—or even if—she’ll see him again. She doesn’t even know who she really _is_ without him. He was and is the one thing that keeps her anchored to her past as a regular human, as _Juliette._ Which is part, or maybe even most, of the reason she has to go.

“I wish you were wrong,” he says finally, still without looking at her. “But I don’t think you are.” His voice is full of loss, regret, and she aches to take that pain from him. There was a time she knew how, how to hold him together when the dangers of this life he chose became too much for him to bear. But that sweetness was beaten out of her, along with her anger, her fear…so many things. Only her love for him had stayed, try as she might to rid herself of it. No amount of beating, burning, or flaying could remove that. It might as well have been carved into her bones.

She doesn’t allow herself to regret, though, not any of it. Not ever. But for one searing moment, she does let herself _wish_ , lets the longing for something she’ll never have again consume her entirely. Only a moment, and then it’s gone.

“I need to say goodbye now, Nick,” she says, turning to him with a look that clearly telegraphs that he should move out of her way. He just looks at her for several seconds, searching. Whatever he’s seeking, he must not find it, because he pushes away from the truck and backs up to the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, looking cold and strangely small.

“Take care of yourself, Eve,” he says, and she knows the bitterness tingeing his voice will stay with her for a long time. Still, she doesn’t allow herself to respond. She gets in the truck, locks the doors, and pulls away from the curb. She keeps her eyes on the road ahead of her, carefully doesn’t look back to watch his shadowy form shrink in the distance.

When she does finally look, just before she turns off the street, there’s no shadow to see. Nick is gone.


	2. Spellbound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adalind begins to suspect that Nick is under a spell, and turns to Rosalee for help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Potentially spoiler-y notes at the end.

The spice shop on Second Avenue in Portland’s Old Town has been a fixture of the neighborhood for nearly three generations now, passed down through the Calvert family to its current proprietor. In recent years it has also become something of a local legend among the Wesen community, as a frequent haunt of the city’s own friendly neighborhood Grimm.

Once, that title was bestowed sarcastically, in hushed whispers between nervous Eisbibers over mugs of beer in the dark corners of the local pubs. Now, though, there’s a fondness to the way the local Wesen—at least the traditionally meek and law-abiding among them—say it. Nick Burkhardt, the Friendly Neighborhood Grimm. Protector of the weak. Righter of wrongs. Tamer of Blutbaden.

(They only ever added the last bit on when the Blutbad in question was far out of earshot, of course.)

Neighborhood folk and regular visitors to the shop knew: if you’d done nothing wrong, you had nothing to fear from the Grimm, or from his strange group of friends: the Hexenbiest who mother of his child, the Hexenbiest who used to be human, the Fuchsbau proprietor of the shop who married the aforementioned Blutbad and had his litter (though no one valued their life so little as to call it a _litter_ in front of either parent), and the friendly Lycanthrope with the macabre sense of humor.

Then there was the fledgling Grimm who was much more volatile than her older counterpart, the severe, stone-faced Captain who was rumored to be the last surviving member of the Royal House of Kronenberg (though a bastard), his uncanny daughter, her brother who may or may not grow to become a Grimm like his father…and the detective who, as far as anyone knew, was just a regular human. A Kehrseite-Schlich-Kennen.

Granted, the Grimm’s reputed friendliness didn’t stop passerby from giving the storefront a wide berth on most days.

It also doesn’t stop the approaching customer—a Klaustreich with a toothache—from thinking better of his errand when he hears the small explosions and shrieks coming from inside. Barely a foot from the shop’s front door, he turns on his heel and heads back down the street the way he had come.

Within the shop itself, in the back room she uses for mixing and experimenting, Rosalee is oblivious to the loss of a customer; she’s too busy fanning the acrid smoke away while also trying to hold her breath.

“Don’t breathe it in if you can help it!” She shouts, the small explosion having temporarily whited out her hearing. On the other side of the cauldron billowing a never-ending cloud of noxious magic gone awry, her brewing companion answers with only a hacking cough.

 _I’m so glad we asked Monroe to take the kids for ice cream,_ she thinks as she gropes blindly for the cauldron’s lid. It’s an old-fashioned, heavy iron affair, and the lid takes both hands to lift once she finds it. But she manages to hoist it up and shove it into place, stemming the endless flow of smoke at last.

That done, she runs for the workshop’s back door and throws it open, untying her apron and fanning it at the fumes to encourage them to dissipate faster. She blinks rapidly in the sudden light, her eyes streaming from the effects of the steam.

From behind her, Adalind’s coughing slowly begins to calm and form itself into intelligible words.

“I take it—“ _cough_ “—that was not—“ _cough_ “—what it was supposed to—“ _cough_ “—do?”

“No,” Rosalee sighs, wiping her hands on one unscorched corner of her apron. “It was supposed to produce a schleiertrank, specifically a schadensblocker. It hides the drinker’s true self from those who wish to do them harm. I thought it might come in handy, what with all the wannabe Kings of Portland coming out of the woodwork these days.”

“It was a good idea, “Adalind concedes, rather graciously for someone who had just been nearly blown up by said attempt at a schleiertrank. “So what went wrong?”

Rosalee ducks back inside and pulls the door closed—somewhat reluctantly—behind her. The interior of the workshop still stinks of failed magic, like burning hair and black licorice.

“Honestly? I’m not sure. It is an old recipe of my father’s, and some of the wording is a bit smudged. Honestly, I almost wish I hadn’t sent Monroe out with the kids. His archaic German is better than all of ours combined.”

“I don’t know about you, but I do _not_ want my kids breathing…whatever this is,” Adalind says emphatically.

“Agreed.” Rosalee sighs again. “Well, I guess we’d better clean this up before Monroe gets back with them, then. I’ll have him look over the recipe tonight and see if he can figure out where we went wrong.”

“And I’ll check in my mother’s books; she wasn’t exactly big on defensive magic, but there might still be a thing or two we can try.”

“Just be careful with those,” Rosalee admonishes, fixing Adalind with the severe, wide-eyed expression that she privately thinks of as Rosalee’s ‘mom glare.’ “You know how dangerous they can be.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Adalind waves her off, but she’s smiling. It’s nice having someone who worries about her enough to tell her to be careful. With her mother it was all about pushing the boundaries of what could be done; there was never time to stop and ask whether you _should_ do something or not.

There was no thought for the personal consequences, the long-term cost of diving head-first into some of the darkest and strongest magic. Catherine Schade would have viewed such hesitations as weakness, and she had not raised a daughter that was weak.

Adalind shakes off the thought of her mother with a light shiver. Only now that she has children of her own does she fully understand how strange and wrong and _dark_ her own childhood had been. Only when she looks at Diana, worries over her ever-growing power, does she wonder with horror how anyone could be so cavalier with throwing their child head-first at such powerful magic.

She turns off the burner underneath the cauldron and begins clearing away the potion supplies, repackaging anything that can be used again and sweeping everything else carefully into the two labeled bins under Rosalee’s work table: a plain plastic-lined one on the left for benign materials, and a wooden one filled with some kind of neutralizing fluid—one of Rosalee’s own recipes, if she remembers correctly—on the right, for reagents.

She’s just finished clearing away the last of it when she faintly hears the front door to the shop open, and the pattering of little feet running across the wooden floors. She smiles and turns to see Diana burst through the door with an unsteadily-toddling Kelly in tow. They cross the room toward her and she meets them half way, wrapping both up in a big hug.

Diana is the first to pull away, wrinkling her nose at the still-hazy air of the workshop.

“Mommy, it stinks in here,” she says bluntly, and Adalind hears Rosalee’s laugh echo her own. She turns to see Rosalee greeting Monroe at the door between the front of the store and the workshop, standing on tiptoe to plant a kiss on his cheek.

“What are we burning?” He asks, jovial as ever. Monroe has always been a lighthearted soul, at least as long as Adalind has known him. But fatherhood has somehow made him yet more so. Even now, undoubtedly too hot with a baby carrier wrapped around his torso and three little bundles snuggled against his back and chest, he looks brighter, happier, more _alive_ than most people she’s known.

Rosalee disappears behind him and emerges a few moments later holding one of the babies. Adalind shakes her head, laughing softly.

“I do _not_ know how you’re doing it; three at once!”

“Well, we rotate which one ends up in back so none of them feel left out. And we have their names on _everything_ so we don’t mix them up. I’m…pretty sure we don’t mix them up.”

“Monroe!” Rosalee admonishes. “We do not mix our children up. Not even the two girls, although they…really do look a lot alike…which one am I holding?”

“Check the blanket,” Monroe says, wisely not adding an ‘I told you so.’

Adalind shakes her head at the two of them. They’re amazing to her, truly. She barely got to spend time with Diana as a baby, but she’s getting the full experience with Kelly: night feedings, colic, the whole kit and caboodle. Now they’re headed straight for the terrible twos. And even with Nick there to help her, little Kelly is more than a match for the stamina of two adults. How Monroe and Rosalee manage when they’re actually outnumbered is beyond her completely.

Speaking of Nick—

“Hey,” comes a voice from the direction of the front door. “Anyone home?”

“Everyone and then some,” Monroe calls over his shoulder. A minute later, Nick pops his head in the door, grinning when he spies her and the kids.

“Hey guys! Guess who came to visit?”

“Who?!” Diana asks, excited. “Is it Auntie Trubel?”

Where she got it, no one knows, but Diana has been insisting on calling Trubel “Auntie” for the last few months. Trubel doesn’t mind, so they haven’t tried to break her of the habit. She does come to visit from time to time, but she’s been moving from place to place for most of her life and seems most comfortable sticking to that pattern so far.

“No, not Auntie Trubel. Guess again!”

“Ummm…is it Bud?”

Someone behind Nick stifles a laugh, and Adalind feels a little twist in her gut at the sound. But Diana heard too, and her reaction is ecstatic.

“It’s Eve! I heard her! Eve!” She lets go of Adalind and goes running for the door, her assertions confirmed when Eve squeezes in under Monroe’s arm to catch her in a hug. Adalind stands slowly. She smiles, and it almost doesn’t feel forced; she can’t help but enjoy how much more like a little girl Diana seems now, with the weight of the world off her shoulders and her parents getting along—more or less.

And it’s not as though she’s unhappy to see Eve, either, not exactly. She likes Eve, she really does. They’ve found some strange sense of understanding and equilibrium in their lives. Eve offered her forgiveness, once upon a time, when she knew she could never deserve it. And Adalind has felt deeply guilty, the last few months, to be secretly glad that Eve decided to go.

She feels even guiltier now, realizing that now Eve is back, she wishes fervently the other woman had stayed away.

Because no matter how much she trusts Nick and _knows_ he loves her…there will always be something in the way he looks at Eve, in the way he says her name—like a question, like he’s looking for someone else—that never fails to get under Adalind’s skin. It doesn’t help that she’s fairly sure she knows _why_ Eve left…and that the leaving was as much for her, Adalind’s, benefit as anyone else’s.

The thought that she might somehow still have Nick only out of Eve’s kindness rankles, threatens to wake something ugly in her that she tries to keep buried deep. She pushes it down once more and focuses on making her smile seem less forced.

“Eve! It’s so good to see you.” If the look Rosalee is giving her is any indication, she’s failing miserably at her goal. Eve must notice, too—for someone who rarely shows any emotions herself, she’s terribly perceptive when it comes to the emotions of others—because she lets go of Diana immediately and straightens up, seeming suddenly formal. Guarded.

“Hello Adalind. It’s good to see you as well.”

A small, petty part of Adalind wants to hate Eve for meaning it. She doesn’t, though. Her smile finally softens into something that feels warm and real.

“How have you been doing? Where did you go?”

Eve shrugs.

“Here and there…I just needed a little bit of time to regroup, after—“ she doesn’t finish that sentence, but she doesn’t need to.

None of them have forgotten the handful of days and weeks _after_. Nick’s nightmares. All their nightmares, really. Diana waking up screaming, thinking _He_ was coming for her again. Her brave, terrifyingly powerful little girl, reduced to tears night after night, terrified. She had even taken to sleeping in their bed, huddled between them with her arms wrapped around either Nick or Adalind, depending on the night. Like she was afraid someone would come and tear her away if she didn’t hold on tightly enough. It had broken Adalind’s heart.

Even Kelly, young as he was, had seemed to sense that something was wrong. He was fussy during the day and reluctant to go down at night, exhausting his parents into snippy, sullen moods on more than one occasion. Adalind had eventually moved his bassinet right next to their bed, afraid to have him too far away. Because she could never be sure if Diana’s fears were a little girl’s night terrors…or the foresight of a prophecy child.

She knew from their conversations since that it had been just as bad for Monroe and Rosalee, albeit for different reasons. The triplets had been a difficult pregnancy, probably made worse by the stress. Rosalee hadn’t gotten more than a couple of hours’ sleep a night for weeks on end, until she was so short-tempered and exhausted that she had to leave the running of the spice shop to Monroe during the day. She had slept in the back room while he worked, the only time she managed to stay asleep for more than a few minutes at a time.

Through it all, though, they had held onto each other. Adalind and Nick, Monroe and Rosalee…even Hank and Wu, she noticed, had seemed to grow closer during that time. Still, it had taken them all several months to begin to trust the relative peace their lives had settled into, after.

Only Eve and Trubel had never seemed fully settled. Perhaps, she realizes now, because neither of them had anyone to hold onto through it. Not the way the rest of them had. So they’d both gone, one right after the other, seeking their peace outside Portland’s borders. Trubel had come back, though, every few weeks since, and Adalind knows she calls Nick regularly.

No one has heard from Eve since the night she left.

Which might account for the coolness in Rosalee’s tone when she asks if Eve would like to meet her children.

Eve blinks, startled. “Yes, I would love to!”

Adalind sighs softly, relieved the attention is no longer on her. She watches Eve ooh and ahh over the new babies, and her heart constricts. She almost sounds like someone else, someone whose return Adalind fears far more than Eve’s. She almost looks like her, too, when she smiles.

It’s that smile, Adalind knows, that breaks through Rosalee’s hurt feelings and prompts her to hand Eve the squirming baby she’s holding. Eve’s smile grows even wider when she sees the pink, squishy little face blinking up at her.

“Hey there,” she says in a soft voice. “What’s your name?”

“That’s Farrin,” Rosalee says, smiling. “She’s the oldest.”

“This is her sister, Fredericka. After Rosalee’s brother,” Monroe supplies, nodding to the baby in the left front pouch of his carrier. “And this little guy on the right here is Felix.”

“Well hello Farrin,” Eve says, her voice edging dangerously toward baby-talk. “I’m Eve. And you are just the cutest little thing I’ve ever seen.” She cuts her eyes toward Adalind. “Um…”

Adalind laughs and waves her off.

“Oh please…the tiniest babies in the room are always the cutest.”

Nick laughs and squeezes her shoulder. She leans into the touch a little, automatically. It feels good to have him there beside her, solid, safe. Even if she can clearly see where his eyes come to rest, unconsciously, over and over.

“So Eve,” she can’t stop herself from asking. “How long are you in town?”

Eve drags her eyes away from the wiggly little bundle in her arms and looks over at Adalind with a slight furrow between her brows.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I wasn’t actually planning to come back so soon, but…” she trails off, as if she decided in mid-sentence that it was better not to finish the thought out loud.

“You missed our gorgeous faces, of course!” The little cluster surrounding the doorway to the workshop parts to admit Hank, Wu close on his heels. The former goes directly to Eve and gives her a shoulder squeeze, careful not to squish or jostle the baby she’s holding.

“I did miss all of you,” Eve concedes. Her eyes flick surreptitiously to Nick’s face for just a split second, and Adalind’s heart sinks. No one else seems to have noticed; they’re all heading toward the front of the shop, chattering about dinner plans. Adalind scoops up Kelly with one arm and grabs Diana’s hand with the other before following, putting in her request that they _not_ eat any greasy take-out even as her brain is circling around Eve’s return at a pace of about a mile a minute, over-analyzing every look and word since her arrival.

She knows she’s being irrational. Nick is not the unfaithful type. And he does care about her. He doesn’t call it love—has never actually said that he loves her, that she recalls—but she thinks he feels it, sometimes. And she understands, better than anyone, the reluctance to put a name to those feelings. Sometimes saying something out loud seems like the first step to losing it; almost like tempting fate. And after all that they’ve been through, she’s honestly surprised sometimes that he can look at her at all, much less with affection.

So she isn’t _worried_. Not really. But she knows there are still feelings there. Nothing between the two of them was ever really resolved. Maybe it never can be, at least as long as Eve stays Eve.

But she sees the way Nick’s eyes light up whenever Eve does something especially Juliette-like. She knows a part of him will always be searching for Juliette in Eve’s voice, in her eyes.

So every little thing Eve does that reminds _her_ of Juliette sets Adalind’s teeth on edge and puts cramps of anxiety in her stomach.

She can’t help it. She’s _tried_.

Suppressing a sigh, she follows the rest of them out the door. She knows there’s nothing she can really do, except hope that Eve’s “visit” is really just that: a visit. And that it doesn’t last too long.

* * *

 

_She’s in the clearing again, and the quiet stretches out around and over her, the kind of quiet that makes you believe you can hear the blood whispering through your veins. It’s maddening._

_Nick turns to look at her just as Zerstörer steps into the clearing, white and gold and onyx against a sea of grey and green. Nick’s eyes blend with the landscape so well that they seem like holes bored straight through his skull, grisly windows to the world behind him._

_The heady feeling of being_ powerful _sweeps through her again, sweeps away everything in its wake. It streaks beneath her skin, tingles in her nail beds, waiting for an opportunity to escape and wreak havoc on its path to the ground._

 _That vicious smile is stretching her lips wide. Too wide. Her cheeks and jaw and teeth ache from it, but it’s a dull sensation underneath the pound-spark-throb of_ I can do anything. Anything _that sings through her blood._

_She lifts her chin, raises her hands. The lightning beneath her skin crackles, surges. Zerstörer crumbles…but his staff survives._

_It flies to Nick’s outstretched hands as he backs away from her in horror. He says something; it might be her name._

_What is her name? It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters over the roar of_ ANYTHING ANYTHING ANYTHING _in her ears._

 _His eyes are glowing at her through the darkness, hurt and betrayal and fear, and it is_ delicious. _She craves it. She needs more. She wants to see his fear turn to_ anguish _. She wants to watch him burn beneath her hands, feel him turn to ashes at her touch._

_What a beautiful sensation that would be._

_She reaches out her hand to him, laughs when she sees the flames that spring up from nothing at a mere_ thought _. Laughs harder when the flames latch onto his flesh and lick it away to the bone, her name turned to wordless screams until his vocal chords are too scorched to make any more sounds at all._

* * *

 

“Adalind. Adalind! Wake up!”

She wakes all at once to find herself sitting upright in bed, Nick’s worried face a few inches from her own, his hands gripping her shoulders too hard.

“Nick,” she says, twisting from his grasp. “Ow!” He releases her immediately.

“I’m sorry!” He says. He looks terrible; his eyes are shadowed like he hasn’t been sleeping, even though she knows he sleeps like the dead most nights.

“You wouldn’t wake up,” he explains, running both hands over his face and through his hair. “You were laughing, but…it sounded wrong. Like you were having some kind of episode, I dunno. It was…” He doesn’t finish the sentence, but she can imagine. She remembers this dream much more clearly than the first.

It must have been terrifying.

She draws her knees up to her chest and reaches out one hand to him. He hesitates only minutely before joining her on the bed. She wraps her arms around him and runs a gentle hand through his hair.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” she says softly. “I was having…a really strange dream. About the clearing again.”

Nick stiffens in her arms. Normally that would give her pause. But she’s afraid that these dreams might be important somehow, so she forces herself to keep going.

The only reason they’ve worked so far is honesty, she reminds herself, honesty and understanding. So she’ll be honest, and she hopes he’ll understand.

“I barely remember the first dream, but in this one it was like…like I was possessed. Like the absolute worst things I felt and thought and wanted when I was a Hexenbiest the _first_ time around came flooding in all at once, so there wasn’t room for anything else. There wasn’t room for _me._ I was just this…insatiable hunger for violence, and power. I killed Zerstörer without even lifting a finger. And then I…I turned on you.”

She endures utter silence for what seems like hours. Eventually, though, she feels Nick relax into her arms, almost deliberately, as if he’s making a conscious effort not to react a certain way. She’s not sure how to feel about that.

Eventually, he speaks.

“You wouldn’t.”

It’s soft, but full of a firm conviction that warms her all the way through. It’s _faith,_ faith in _her_ —something she never would have asked for and has no right to. Something she has tried to deserve, every day. She holds him tighter and presses her face to his hair, breathing in deep.

“I wouldn’t,” she echoes. “I would never do anything to hurt you. I would do anything I had to do to protect you, and Diana and Kelly. I would die for you.”

He reaches up suddenly and pulls her down, wrapping her up in his arms and pressing an almost-too-hard kiss to her mouth.

“Please don’t ever say that,” he says, his voice gone a little ragged. “I think I’d go crazy if I lost you.”

She smiles and pulls him to her again, resuming running her fingers through his hair.

“I don’t plan to go anywhere,” she says. But something about his reaction troubles her.

It’s not the first time he’s said something like that. She remembers thinking then that it didn’t sound like Nick, not at all. Not the Nick she’s known for the last five years, anyway. And not just because it’s _her_ he’s saying it to.

Nick’s never been an obsessive person, not when it comes to anything: love, grief, revenge. Nothing. He’s strangely well-balanced that way. He doesn’t let things consume him, even things that drive most men to terrifying extremes.

She’d worried, early on in their strange relationship, that he was just bottling everything up, turning himself into an emotional ticking time bomb. But eventually she had learned that he was just _ridiculously_ even-keeled. It had definitely taken some getting used to after the kinds of men she had dealt with all her life.

Even when his mother had died…he grieved. He threw himself into going after the people responsible…but he never let it take him over completely. He never let it turn him into something dark or ugly.

Any other man would have declared war on the Royals and hunted them to extinction. But he had only gone after Kenneth. And, well…Juliette.

That had been different; that _had_ been something of an obsession. But then, that hadn’t been all Nick, either. There had been magic at play. In fact, the only exceptions to the rule she can think of have been the results of magic, either enacted upon Nick himself, or upon those close to him.

She stifles a little gasp of discovery, her hands stilling in Nick’s hair. _Of course._

Nick is suffering from the effects of a spell. He has to be.

Fortunately, she knows a fuchsbau with a few counterspells up her flannel sleeves.

* * *

 

Adalind waits until she’s sure Nick is out of the loft and on his way to work before she calls Rosalee. Rosalee answers on the third ring with a breathless, harried-sounding “Spice Shop!”

“Hey Rosalee, it’s Adalind. I was just wondering if you have some time today to work through a little problem with me.”

There’s some shuffling and a muffled “take the baby!” before Rosalee answers.

“Adalind, hi, of course! Sorry, it is _crazy_ around here today. But if you want to come by the shop, sure, I can make a little time. As long as it’s not another attempt at a schadenblocker. I still haven’t gotten that smell out of the curtains.”

Adalind forces herself to laugh at that; she’s really just not in a laughing mood, not if someone is working some unknown magic against Nick.

“No, no schadenblockers today, I promise. More of a neutralizing potion.”

“Oh,” Rosalee says, sounding a little nonplussed. “Well sure, I have a base for one of those pre-mixed. Come on over and we’ll talk through the specifics of what needs countering, see what we can whip up.”

“Great. I’m just gonna drop the kids off with a babysitter—“

“Oh, no, don’t worry about that!” Rosalee interrupts. “Eve’s here, she’s helping Monroe with the triplets. I’m sure two more wouldn’t kill them. Just uh…remind Diana not to levitate anyone under the age of thirty.”

“Will do,” Adalind says. “See you soon!”

“’Bye,” Rosalee says, and then there’s the click of her hanging up.

Adalind sighs, half in exasperation, half in relief. She forgot that Eve stays at the spice shop when she’s in town. She’s in no hurry to see the other woman again, for all that they do actually get along fine when they’re together.

There’s just too much baggage there—and, if she’s honest, no small amount of guilt on her part. But she does need someone to watch Diana and Kelly while she works this through with Rosalee, and at least this way Eve won’t have time to pay any attention to what she and Rosalee are actually _doing._ Adalind doesn’t think Eve would spell Nick _intentionally_ , but she’s also the only other powerful Hexenbiest that’s been around for this entire mess. And it’s entirely possible this is just some side effect of some completely unrelated spell, an innocent mistake with no ill intentions behind it.

It’s possible…but their luck has never been that good.

Adalind shakes herself out of her reverie and grabs her purse.

“Diana sweetie,” she calls in the direction of Diana’s bed. “Get up and get dressed if you’re not already. We’re going to go see Rosalee and Monroe.”

Diana pokes her head out of her little sleeping nook. She’s still in her nightgown.

“Will Eve be there?” She asks excitedly. Adalind forces a smile and nods.

She tries not to grind her teeth at the excited “yippee!” Diana gives as she withdraws into her nook to get dressed.

* * *

 

With the kids handed off to Eve and Monroe, Adalind follows Rosalee into the workshop and closes the door behind them. Rosalee heads straight for her work apron and starts tying it on.

“Okay, so what are we making an antidote for, exactly?”

Adalind twists her hands nervously in front of her, suddenly feeling foolish. Nick says something a little off and she concludes he must be under a spell? Maybe these nightmares she’s been having are making her paranoid.

“Honestly? I’m not sure.” Rosalee’s eyebrows reach for her hairline. “It is just…something Nick said this morning. It seemed…off.”

Rosalee’s look turns sympathetic and knowing in a way that Adalind hates. It’s the look she used to give Adalind whenever Nick called Eve “Juliette” by mistake.

“I don’t think I have a spell that’s going to help with that. What did he say?”

“That’s just it,” Adalind bursts out, plopping into a chair. She’s frustrated with herself; she should have thought this through more thoroughly before running to Rosalee, ringing the alarm bells and making wild assumptions.

But Rosalee sits down in another chair and puts on her listening face, so Adalind sighs and tries to explain.

“Back…before. When I was stuck in the mayor’s mansion with Sean…when I got back, Nick said something that just did _not_ sound like him. He said…he said he thought he was gonna go crazy without me. Which…it’s really not a Nick thing to say, you know? Some men are like that. Sean certainly was. But Nick isn’t.”

“At the time,” she continues, “I chalked it up to the circumstances, you know, just being emotional. But then this morning…he said almost the exact same thing again. He said he’d go crazy if he lost me. And it struck me as…odd, I dunno. It sounded more like someone under an obsession spell than Nick on a normal day. Anyway, maybe I’m just overreacting, but…I got worried.”

Rosalee’s face is carefully neutral, as though she’s trying not to exacerbate Adalind’s worries by appearing too concerned herself…or dismiss them by being too _un_ concerned. She doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then:

“Okay, well…I agree it doesn’t sound like Nick on a normal day, but…what’s a normal day for Nick? I mean, the two of you…” she trails off, looking embarrassed.

“No, you can say it,” Adalind says. “ _We’re_ not normal. He’s a Grimm. I’m a Hexenbiest. We don’t make any sense. We never have. Hell, he and I specifically probably make even less sense than he would with literally any other Hexenbiest on the planet.”

“It’s true, you two have been through a lot,” Rosalee says gently. “And a lot of it was…well, pretty terrible. So maybe it took some unusually strong feelings to overcome all of that enough to be where you both are now.”

“Maybe,” Adalind concedes with a sigh. “Maybe I just have trouble believing in a good thing when it happens to me. I mean…I thought I loved Sean, too, once upon a time. And Nick loved Juliette so much, before she became a Hexenbiest, and we just barely averted an honest to god _apocalypse_ less than a year ago, and now…I just can’t help feeling like something else big and scary and horrifying is still out there, just waiting for us to let our guards down.”

Rosalee reaches out and pulls her to her feet, clasping their hands together.

“Listen, I get it. I do. Sometimes I don’t think there’s any way our lives can stay this beautiful, this _peaceful._ Before we had the triplets, I was dead set on leaving Portland. I told Monroe I wanted to go. We even started making plans to move. It was starting to feel like our lives here were cursed, but Adalind...” she squeezes her hands and fixes Adalind with a pointed stare until Adalind meets her eyes reluctantly.

“We are going to be alright. Zerstörer is gone. The royals are gone. We’re _safe_. And if something else does come along? We’ll fight it. Together, like we always do.”

Adalind offers Rosalee a watery smile and returns the reassuring squeeze.

“Thanks. I guess sometimes it’s hard to believe this is really my life.”

“I know what you mean,” Rosalee says, releasing her. “Now, I think I have just the thing to make you feel better.” She goes to one of her shelves and starts gathering up an armful of bottles. She takes these to her work bench and pulls out a mortar and pestle. Adalind comes forward and leans against the opposite side of the table, watching with some fascinations as Rosalee adds various items to the mortar and begins grinding and crushing them with the pestle. The way she works is so different from how Adalind remembers her mother’s spellwork. Catherine Schade had done everything with a cold efficiency, focused only on the end result. With Rosalee, there’s a loving care in every gesture. She once told Adalind that she feels most connected to her brother and father when she works in the shop. It’s as if every remedy she brews is a tribute to their memories, and all the more powerful for being infused with all that love, all that family history.

She explains this particular concoction as she works.

“This is one I probably should have been making all of us use for years, but…well, the ingredients are rare, expensive, and extremely volatile…and it doesn’t keep well. It has a twenty-four hour shelf life, and then it’s so much useless dust.”

“What does it do?” Adalind follows Rosalee’s hands with her eyes as she pours a multitude of colorful powdered ingredients together into a glass vial.

“Well, you know magic leaves traces. So you mix this up, and then within twenty-four hours of mixing it, you throw it at the person or object you suspect of being under the influence of magic. If they’re free and clear it just falls to the ground. But if there are traces of magic, it creates almost a static cling effect.”

“Sounds…messy.”

“Oh believe me,” Rosalee says, voice a little strained as she puts all her weight behind grinding the ingredients in the pestle to a fine powder. “If there was a way to do this that didn’t require a ridiculous amount of cleanup, I would do it. But most other methods I know of can give off false positives if you’re using them on creatures that are in some way inherently connected to magic themselves. And no one knows how much of a Grimm’s powers are mystical versus physiological, since it’s not like one will sit _still_ long enough for anyone to study them at all. So this is the most fool-proof way.”

Adalind smiles a little at the disgruntled tone in Rosalee’s voice. She wonders how often Nick has declined to help Rosalee in the advancement of Grimm-related studies.

“The nice thing,” Rosalee continues as she funnels the mixture into one of the bottles, “is that once it’s used it becomes inert, so you can just sweep it up like normal dust.”

“Oh good. Wouldn’t want to blow up the loft if I can help it.” She takes the offered bottle from Rosalee’s hand. “Is there enough for us to test it?”

“Sure, go ahead,” Rosalee says, taking several steps back. At Adalind’s questioning look, she explains: “The range of this stuff is relatively small. And working here, the stuff that I handle every day? I’m _always_ a false positive, no matter what method I use.”

“Right,” Adalind laughs lightly. She holds the bottle in front of her and taps a little bit out.

It falls at first, then stops suddenly in midair and floats. It stays suspended there for a couple of seconds. Then suddenly, it flies toward her sweater and sticks there. She stares down at it, confused. _But…I’m not the one who’s under a spell…am I?_

She looks up at Rosalee, who looks surprised.

“Well…I guess being in here could fudge the results a little. Maybe we should take this outside and try it again there.”

Adalind nods, relieved. They head for the workshop’s back door and step into the little alleyway. The dust on her sweater doesn’t budge, but she tells herself that could be a fluke and taps another small bit out.

The same thing happens.

Adalind swears colorfully. Now Rosalee looks truly concerned. She takes the bottle from Adalind’s hands and guides her back inside, sitting her down in one of the chairs and considering her seriously for a moment before beginning to bombard her with a flurry of questions.

“Have you seen any other Hexenbiests or Zauberbiests lately? Could Sean have done something? Have you taken any food or drink from strangers? Have you left your drink alone while you were out anywhere? Have you been experiencing any strange symptoms? Disrupted sleep patterns? Have—“

“Rosalee, slow down!” Adalind interrupts. “First of all, I have not been out _anywhere_ other than here or your house for months. I eat all my meals with you guys, Nick, and the kids. The only Hexenbiests or Zauberbiests I ever see are Eve and Sean, and I don’t think he would risk his little girl’s wrath to put some spell on me. I think Diana would notice, don’t you?”

“You’re probably right,” Rosalee concedes doubtfully. “But what about other symptoms? Anything?”

Adalind hesitates for a moment before answering.

“Well…I have been having really strange dreams on and off for the last few months. But I thought it was just my brain trying to make sense of everything that happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“I always dream of the cabin,” Adalind says softly, looking down at her hands. “The one we never actually went to? The one Nick told us about, from—“

“From the Other Place?” Rosalee has gone quiet as well, the way they all do whenever they talk about it. As if they’re worried something might still be listening.

“Yes. I dream we’re standing in the clearing. I know the kids are in the cabin, but I can’t hear them. It’s too quiet. Then _he_ shows up.”

Rosalee doesn’t ask who _He_ is. She doesn’t need to. They almost never say his name out loud, not even in whispers.

“He shows up, and something happens to me. I…I change. Or…maybe I change back. It’s hard to explain. It is like I’m the person I was before I had Diana and Kelly. Before I became friends with all of you. Cold. Selfish. Maybe even evil. All she wanted—all _I_ want, in these dreams—is power. To have it, and to use it to hurt people. I use it to kill…him.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound so evil,” Rosalee says quietly, clearly trying to lighten the mood a little. Adalind looks at her squarely.

“I kill Nick, too,” she whispers, and hears the horror of it in her own voice. “He touches me, and he crumbles to dust…or he tries to fight me, and I burn him away to nothing. And when it happens…I’m _glad._ ”

Her voice breaks. In the dreams, she feels nothing but a manic jubilation. Waking up afterward, she usually just feels that muzzy-headedness you get from sleeping for too long. But talking about it here, with Rosalee, in the cozy little workshop in the light of day, it’s as though all of the horror she should have been feeling—all the grief and terror and the awful gaping _loss_ of watching Nick die right in front of her over and over—just comes rushing in at once. She feels tears stinging her cheeks, and then she’s wrapped up in a warm, firm hug.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Rosalee reassures her softly. “We’ll get through this. Why don’t you tell Nick to meet you at our house tonight? We can test for any residual magic and then figure out where to go from there.”

Adalind gets control of herself with some difficulty and pulls back, nodding. She feels a flash of annoyance with herself—when did she become so weak?—that she stifles as quickly as she can. That’s something Catherine would have thought, something the old Adalind would have thought. She does not want to be like Catherine. She doesn’t ever want to go back to what she was.

She doesn’t want her children to grow up with a mother who thinks people are only worth the power they have or the use they can be put to.

“I’ll call him right now and let him know,” she says.

“Good idea,” Rosalee says. “Tell him to bring Hank, Wu, and Renard, too.” At Adalind’s questioning look, she continues. “If you’re under the influence of some kind of magic, we should test everyone. Just in case.”

“Okay,” she says. “I’ll tell him.”

* * *

 

Later that night, they’re all gathered in Monroe and Rosalee’s living room. Adalind perches on the corner of the couch, nervously twisting her hands around each other. Diana sits next to her, all the way back on the couch so that her feet stick out straight over the edge. Kelly is toddling on the floor in front of them, trying to use his sister’s socked foot as leverage to stand up. She is careful not to move her feet, even though Adalind can feel her upper body twitching and hear her giggling; Diana is terribly ticklish.

Hank, Wu, and Sean are hovering near the door, looking confused, expectant, and impatient, respectively. Nick is on the other side of Diana, grinning from ear to ear and entirely absorbed in watching Kelly’s attempts to walk.

Eve is on his other side, looking contained as always, hands in her lap and watching Kelly as well with only the smallest of smiles. Monroe has the triplets in their bassinets, and looks up anxiously as Rosalee enters the room carrying two small bottles filled with the greyish-blue, faintly shimmering dust.

“Okay everyone,” she begins. “I’m sure you’re wondering why we’ve called you all here.” This is greeted with various murmurs of assent. Monroe speaks up over the low din.

“Are you absolutely sure this is safe for the babies?”

That gets Nick’s attention. He drags his eyes away from Kelly long enough to focus on Rosalee, concerned.

“Safe? What’s going on?”

“Well,” Rosalee starts, looking to Adalind. “We—“

“I think there’s some kind of spell on us,” Adalind interrupts. Everyone in the room goes quiet, and all eyes snap to her immediately.

“On all of us?” Hank says anxiously, looking over at Wu as though expecting to see some visible sign of magic somewhere on his person.

“Maybe not,” Rosalee starts again. “But earlier today I was testing this powder, and it attached itself to Adalind. Which would only happen if—“

“If I was being affected by some kind of magic,” Adalind finishes.

“Right, but you’re a Hexenbiest,” Wu points out. “Are not you kind of…always being affected by some kind of magic?”

“Well, sort of,” Adalind says slowly.

“But this particular powder is meant to sense energies left behind by spell _work_ specifically,” Rosalee explains. “The kind that comes from a potion or incantation that’s still in effect. Adalind’s Hexenbiest nature wouldn’t register. Neither would Diana’s powers, or any potential mystical source of Nick’s Grimm abilities.”

Nick turns to look at her over Diana’s head. “The dreams--?”

“Dreams?” Sean asks, and Adalind is surprised at the real concern in his voice. “What dreams?”

Diana responds before Nick or Adalind can.

“Sometimes Mommy has bad dreams about the Other Place,” she says. Adalind wraps an arm around her shoulder, gently.

“How did you know that, sweetie?” Diana shrugs.

“I heard you laughing one morning, and then I heard you and Nick talking. You sounded worried, so I went into your dreams to see if I could help.” She must see something of Adalind’s horror in her face, because her face starts to crumple. “Was that bad?”

Adalind schools her expression quickly and embraces her daughter.

“No sweetie…you were trying to help. That’s a good thing. Just…always ask before entering someone’s dreams or thoughts, okay? It’s good manners to always ask.”

“Okay,” Diana says, slightly mollified. “I’ll ask next time, promise.”

“So these dreams,” Sean cuts in awkwardly. “Do you think they might have something to do with whatever magic is affecting Adalind?”

“We don’t know for sure,” Rosalee says. “So for now, what we need most is more information. We need to know what this magic is, where it came from, and the extent of its reach. If it’s affecting all of us, some of us, or just Adalind.”

“So that’s what the bottles are for,” Hank says. “There aren’t any wacky side effects to this, are there?” He side-eyes Eve.

“Just a little bit of clean-up to get rid of the dust later,” Rosalee reassures him. Monroe starts to object again, but she fixes him with a severe look.

“And yes, I’m sure it won’t hurt the babies. Do you think for a second I would even contemplate subjecting them to something that would?”

“Sorry,” Monroe says sheepishly. “I’m just a little…protective, you know?” Rosalee’s face softens immediately.

“Yes, I know, and I love you for it. But you don’t need to protect our children from _me_.”

“Okay,” he accedes, standing up. “So, how do we do this?”

“Well…the best way would be to stand in a circle, throw one of the bottles in the center, and see who it attaches to. But I don’t want broken glass flying around the kids, so I was hoping Diana could use her powers to remove the stopper from the bottle. If we stand in a perfect circle and place the bottle in the center, it should separate equally and adhere to anyone with residual magic energies. I did some aura cleansing earlier to make sure I don’t get a false positive from all the spice shop work.”

“Diana sweetie, do you think you can do that?” Adalind asks her daughter gently.

“Of course!” Diana says gleefully, always happy to help. Adalind can’t help but smile.

“Okay,” Rosalee says. “So everyone, stand in a circle with me. Monroe, move the bassinets back a little so they can be part of it too. Hank, Wu, Renard, come forward. Let’s make it as round and uniform as possible.”

Nick and Adalind stand, Nick bending over to pick up Kelly and perch him on the couch, helping keep him balanced as he does so. Everyone else shuffles around until they’re in more or less a uniform circle.

“Great. Now,” Rosalee crouches down and places the bottle in the center, then moves back into the place reserved for her on the other side of the triplets’ bassinets. “Diana, whenever you’re ready!”

“Okay,” Diana chirps. She concentrates on the little bottle briefly. Her eyes flare purple, and then the stopper flies from the bottle with a soft _pop_ and lands at Diana’s feet. She beams at Rosalee.

“There you go!”

Rosalee opens her mouth to thank her, but her voice dies in her throat. The dust is rising from the bottle. It hangs suspended in the air between them all for a few brief moments, shimmering. Then, it separates and flies in three different directions at once.

The room is silent. Three members of the group stare down at their torsos, now covered in thin layers of glimmering blue-grey dust.

Adalind is the first to speak, and there’s a note of deep dread in her voice.

“Rosalee…?”

She stares down at herself, and then looks to her left.

Diana is looking up at them, back and forth between them one at a time. She reaches out a little hand to pat at the dust on Nick’s shirt, giggling.

“It’s so pretty!” she says delightedly.

Adalind’s eyes drag themselves away from the shimmering layer coating Eve’s front as well, up to her expressionless eyes. When she speaks, her voice is low and dangerous in a way it has not been in years.

“What,” she bites out. “Did you _do._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of this chapter takes place in Adalind's head, because one of the things I want to "fix" about the show's ending is how little character Adalind had toward the end. A segment of fandom referred to her as podperson!Adalind because she seemed to have been replaced with a completely one-dimensional girlfriend character with zero agency.
> 
> Spending so much time in Adalind's head has made me have a lot of sympathy for some parts of the character, especially aspects of her that I feel the show didn't spend enough time on, like what her childhood must have been like with a mother like Catherine, and how she actually felt about the things she'd done in the past and the person she'd been, and the possibility of being that person again.
> 
> There's also a fair bit of magical exposition in this chapter, so I apologize for that. I just felt like the characters would really need to hash out some of the technical aspects of all these spells to really begin to solve the problem.


	3. Heart Pains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tensions run high as Nick digs himself deep into denial. Adalind must work with Eve to find a way to make him face reality. Monroe and Rosalee contemplate what it will mean for their friends if their theory is correct.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot more magical exposition in this one. I can't seem to help it, because the show never went into any depth at all when it came to how their magic worked.

Rosalee shoots Monroe a look, and he immediately starts moving the bassinets backward, out of the line of fire. Hank and Wu move forward automatically, flanking Eve. Hank puts his hands up, a placating gesture.

“Adalind, come on. You don’t really think Eve would—“

“Why not?” She spits out. She tries to calm herself down, but it’s hard. She is seeing red. Every uneasy thought, every insecure moment she’s ever had about the other woman is bursting to the surface. All the times she’s caught her looking at Nick when she thought no one else could see. And worse…all the times she’s seen Nick looking at Eve, too…looking for the woman she used to be. Always hoping.

Then, into all that red comes two splashes of ocean green. Her blurring vision resolves to focus on Nick’s worried face. The heat-rage flying over her skin cools and consolidates itself into the warmth of his hands on her arms. She has a flash memory of his skin turning to dust as he touches her, and pulls away before she can convince herself that this is not a dream, that it won’t happen here.

“Adalind?” He whispers. The hurt in his voice saws at her like a dulled knife.

“I’m sorry,” she says. She turns and flees the room.

Nick stares at the spot she vacated in stunned silence, unsure of what there is to say. Rosalee exchanges a worried glance with Monroe.

“Should someone go after her?” Wu ventures, voice uncharacteristically soft and serious.

“I’ll go,” Renard says decisively, and Nick gives him a sharp look that quickly dissolves into a grateful nod. Renard sweeps out of the room in the direction Adalind went, and the rest of them stare at each other, still unsure of what to say.

Eve is the first one to speak.

“Nick,” she starts. “I swear, I didn’t—“

“I know,” he interrupts her. “I know you wouldn’t.” They look at each other for a long moment, and then she turns and leaves as well. After an agonized, guilty look back toward the direction Adalind went, Nick follows Eve from the room, leaving a deeply uncomfortable silence behind him.

“Is it just me,” Wu says finally, unable to help himself, “or did they all leave paired with the wrong people?”

“Do not,” Hank says severely. “Do not _even_ go there.”

* * *

 

In the first moments after he steps into Monroe and Rosalee’s front yard, Nick thinks with a rising panic that he’s already lost her ( _again_ , he tries not to think). But then he sees a small shadow moving swiftly toward the tree line at the edge of the park across the street, and he takes off running. It’s all he can do to keep from calling out.

Thankfully, nearly-inhuman running speed is one of those strange gifts being a Grimm has bestowed on him. He catches her just before she reaches the trees, reaches out a hand to stop her—

—and is promptly confronted with the snarling, undead visage of a Hexenbiest. He releases her arm, but realizes with some surprise that he no longer has to think about it to keep himself from flinching away. There was a time he could barely look at her in this form. Now, she’s just… _Juliette,_ his mind whispers. _Eve_ he thinks firmly. Both, and neither. The strongest parts of each, and he gravitates helplessly to that strength.

“Eve, wait,” he says softly, when she seems on the verge of running away from him again. He very deliberately wraps a hand gently around her wrist, refusing to look away. She takes a deep breath, and her face shifts back.

“Why?” She asks, her voice cracking with more emotion than he’s heard from her in a long while. Not for the first time, he’s confronted with the strange dual sensation of some part of himself reaching out to her instinctively, aching to soothe the pain in her voice…while the rest of him, the parts she can see, the parts that _matter,_ stand perfectly still. Show nothing. Do nothing.

“I should never have come back,” she says to his silence, voice low and toneless. “It’s only causing problems.”

“Hey,” he finally speaks up. “If there’s a problem here, it is _not_ your fault. You didn’t bring this with you. We just found out about it now, that’s all.”

She blinks up at him, seeming almost…confused?

“You really don’t blame me,” she says, and it’s not a question. It sounds more like a realization.

“Of course not. None of this is your fault.”

She considers him for a moment.

“You’ve…changed,” she says finally. He blinks, then colors slightly at the implication.

“For the better, I hope,” he says softly. That earns him a small smile, and it’s like the first warm rays of sunlight in the spring falling across his face. He can’t help it: some part of him, buried deep, yearns to dip his head down toward that smile. For a moment, he thinks he can even make the rest of him cooperate.

“Eve—“

“Nick? Nick!” A call from the direction of the house breaks the moment. Eve pulls herself gently away, and he closes his eyes and lets out a resigned sigh. With more effort than it should require, he makes himself take a step away and turn to look back toward Monroe’s front door.

“Coming!” He calls. He turns back to Eve. Her smile has fallen just a fraction, gone a little rueful at the corners.

“Go on,” she says. “Go back. I’m going to head to the spice shop. But I’ll see you later.”

“Later,” he says firmly, with the weight of a promise. He wants to say more. He needs her to know how much he wants her to stay…but that one word is all he has time for before she turns and walks away, back toward the house and her truck parked out front.

Nick lets out another sigh of resignation and then heads to the house as well, steeling himself for whatever questions await him.

As it turns out, however, there’s only one question on everyone’s mind.

“We need to identify the exact spell you’re all under,” Rosalee says as soon as Nick rejoins them in the living room. Adalind has returned as well; she’s tucked tightly against one corner of the couch, holding Kelly and looking oddly sheepish and small. She glances up anxiously when he sits down beside her, and seems to relax only minutely at the touch of his hand on her arm. He wants to tell her everything is going to be alright, but he honestly isn’t sure whether or not that’s true.

He forces himself to tune back in to what the others are saying.

“So how exactly do we pinpoint the spell?” Monroe is asking. Rosalee thinks for a moment.

“Typically it’s helpful to know the symptoms. Sometimes those can be pretty subtle…mood changes, acting out of character. Slightly more of your hair falling out than usual. Trouble sleeping, strange dreams. Anything out of the ordinary, really, especially if there’s no other clear cause. It would also help to know what form it came in—was it a cursed object, an incantation, something you ingested, sex magic—“

“Sex magic?” Adalind squeaks, eyes flicking toward Nick uncertainly. Nick looks around and notes with some relief that Diana is nowhere in the room. Neither is Renard. He must have taken her home.

“It’s one of several methods of delivery. An uncommon one, though, really only used in love or obsession spells, transference spells, a few very specific bindings, maybe, but—“

“What about—what about an accidental transference?” Adalind nearly whispers, haltingly. Rosalee looks pensive for a moment, considering.

“You mean as part of a love spell? Or—“

“Verfluchte Zwillingsschwester,” Adalind interrupts, even more quietly. Rosalee falls silent, and her eyes grow wide. She’s staring at Adalind with a look of complete understanding…and complete horror.

“Oh,” she breathes. Nick looks from her stricken face to Adalind’s. The latter has gone pale as a sheet, and even looks a little sick. She’s holding onto Kelly like a lifeline, and he’s starting to squirm a little under it. Nick looks back to Rosalee, and sees understanding dawning on Monroe’s face as well.

“Uh, can someone remind those of us who don’t speak fluent German what ver-fluke-ta whatsit means?” Wu asks, a little irritably. Hank speaks up as well before anyone can elaborate.

“I mean, my German’s not perfect, but…’damned twin sister?’ Doesn’t really make sense.”

But it makes sense to Nick. His insides freeze. He feels, very distantly, his son’s little hand swatting at his arm. A single point of warmth in a suddenly ice cold world.

 _Verfluchte Zwillingsschwester_. The twinning spell. Accidental transference…something affecting only Adalind, Eve, and him…

“No,” he says softly. Then, more forcefully: “No.” He looks at Adalind, and whatever she sees in his face makes her shrink back a little.

“That can’t be it,” he says firmly. “We need to look for something else.”

“Nick,” she says softly. Pleadingly.

“No.” He says it again, trying to make it _clear_ this time. “That’s not it.”

He stands abruptly.

“We should go home,” he says, and even he hears the plaintive note in his voice as he says _home._ “Thanks for all your help, Rosalee. Let us know if you think of anything else.”

“Nick—“ she tries, but he cuts her off.

“We’ll see you later.” He looks over at Adalind, not so much expectant as desperate. She stares at him for a moment, clearly torn. But finally, she stands, hoisting Kelly against her hip. She forces a small smile for Rosalee’s sake.

“We’ll talk about all of this more later,” she says. Nick feels strangely defensive, wants to clarify that by this they mean _literally any other possibility but that._ But he forces himself to stay silent. He’ll talk to Rosalee later, in private. Convince her, somehow, that it _cannot_ be the twinning spell. That they would have noticed, long before now, if they were showing any symptoms.

 _You mean like your girlfriend turning into a Hexenbiest? Or suddenly falling in love with someone you couldn’t even stand?_ A traitorous voice whispers in the back of his mind. He ignores it.

The ride home is silent, as painfully awkward as their first night together in bunker. It doesn’t let up when they get there, either. They move as if on autopilot: putting Kelly to bed, getting dressed, brushing their teeth. They crawl into their respective sides of the bed and lay there in the dark, more space between them than they’ve had since that very first night.

It feels like a much wider chasm is opening between them with every second of silence that passes. Deep, dark and terrible, impassable. He rolls over and tries to pick out the lines and curves of Adalind’s face in the yellow-tinged darkness, looks for the gleam of her eyes.

“I love you,” he says fiercely, sending it across the growing space between them. Hoping the words will build a bridge.

She turns toward him.

“Do you?” She asks, and her voice is full of unshed tears. He reaches out and gathers her in close, wraps both arms around her and buries his face in her hair, as if he can somehow block it out, shield both of them from it. The possibility that this—what they feel, what they’ve shared, their whole life together for the past two years—has all been a magic trick. Another cruel side effect of an out-of-control, experimental spell.

“I feel it,” he says. “Don’t you?”

“I do,” Adalind answers immediately. “I just…suddenly I don’t know if I can trust what I feel. What if it’s all a lie? What if we never loved each other? What if we don’t even _like_ each other? What if you never forgave me? What if I never…never changed at all? Oh god—“

“Shhh,” he says, holding her tighter and pressing kisses into her hair. “You _did_ change. And it had nothing to do with me, remember? You said you wanted to be better for Diana, and for Kelly. And you _are_. You’re not that person anymore, Adalind. You don’t ever have to be that person again.”

“I don’t want to be,” she mumbles into his chest. “But…what if that’s part of it, too? Wanting to be good? Wanting to be a better mother than the one I had? What if it’s all just…just smoke and mirrors?”

“You know that’s not true,” Nick counters stubbornly. “You wanted to be there for Diana before the twinning spell. You loved her from the moment she was born. Magic had nothing to do with that.”

“Maybe,” she says. “I just…in these dreams I keep having, I’m…I’m me at first. I’m me, and I feel things, and I’m scared, and I love you. And then…then it’s like a switch flips, and I’m worse than I ever was before Diana. I’m cold. I feel _nothing_. You’re just an obstacle standing between me and my goal, and…and when you get in the way, I—“

Her voice breaks, and she can’t continue.

Nick doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know what to _do._ For the second time that night, he thinks that he would give anything to be able to tell her everything is going to be okay, and mean it.

But if he’s honest with himself, he truly doesn’t know.

* * *

 

Rosalee sits hunched over at her kitchen table, frowning down at a big, leather-bound volume full of tiny writing in an archaic, nearly-indecipherable dialect from the 1450s of some obscure, rustic, proto-German hamlet. Her eyes burn and ache with exhaustion, but she carefully turns each yellowing page, peering at the next one and hoping for an answer that the previous two hundred have thus far failed to provide.

“Hey,” Monroe says softly from the entryway. She looks up and offers him a tired smile.

“Hey,” she returns. “Are the triplets down?”

“Yeah, sleeping like little angels.”

She stifles a yawn. “You going to bed?”

“On my way,” he says. “You comin’? You can’t read that whole tome in one night.”

Rosalee sighs and nods, marking her place before closing the book and then shuffling over to wrap her husband in a grateful hug.

“Thank you for taking care of them tonight. I’m so glad you love me,” she says, voice muffled slightly by the sleeve of his sweater. He grins down at her and returns the embrace.

“I’m so glad you love me,” he repeats back to her, changing the emphasis of _you_ and _me_ just enough to change the meaning. “I can’t imagine what Nick and Adalind must be feeling right now.”

Rosalee nods sadly, and then has to stifle another yawn as she leads the way up the stairs to their bedroom.

“Neither can I. And I can’t imagine how much worse it will be for them if it turns out that I’m right.”

“Worse? How could it be worse than this?” Monroe asks as he turns down her corner of the bed for her before heading over to turn down his side as well.

“Well,” Rosalee says, shedding layers slowly as she talks through yawns she can no longer hold back. “If I’m right, and it _is_ the twinning spell, then it may not just be Adalind and Nick’s relationship that was affected. I mean, think back…Nick and Juliette had a few problems here and there, sure, but it was like one minute they were in love, and the next—“

“Juliette was a mad murderous Hexenbiest and Nick could barely stand to look at her? Yeah, I remember. It was awful.”

“And we already knew that Juliette’s change in character was not entirely her fault. It was a side effect of becoming a Hexenbiest. Or we thought so then, anyway. But now I wonder. We’ve met other Hexenbiests, and not _all_ of them were nightmares.”

“Right,” Monroe says, sounding slightly dubious. But then, more seriously. “So you think maybe Juliette got more of Adalind than just becoming a Hexenbiest?”

“Exactly,” Rosalee says, crawling under the covers. “And I think maybe Adalind got some things from Juliette, too. Like her connection with Nick.”

“So…if we break this spell, that means—“

“That means Adalind might revert to her old self. Her old, _bad_ self. And that Nick and Eve—“

She trails off. Monroe is silent for a moment.

“Wow,” he says finally. “Poor Juliette.”

Rosalee rolls over and looks at him, surprised.

“Poor Juliette? You’ve never shown much sympathy for her before.”

“Yeah well…she _did_ nearly shoot you that one time,” he says, eyes flashing red for just a moment at the memory. “But I just thought…if you’re right—and no offense, but I hope this once you’re completely _not_ right—it’s bad enough to be Nick and Adalind right now. Being forced to feel something you don’t really feel…for someone you hate? I mean, the stuff they’ve done to each other.” He shudders lightly.

“But imagine being Juliette in this equation. Suddenly you can’t feel what you used to feel for the person you used to _love_ more than anything. I mean…this is _Nick_ and _Juliette_ we’re talking about. They seemed unbreakable once upon a time, you know? They had their issues, like you said, but…I mean I figured they’d be right behind us, getting married and all. They were together for, what? Seven years? And then suddenly that doesn’t matter because someone casts a spell? That’s just…really terrible.”

“This whole thing is terrible,” Rosalee agrees. “And for the record, just this once…I really hope I’m not right, too.”

He leans in and kisses her on the nose.

“Here’s to you not being right, then.”

She smiles and snuggles closer into his arms.

“I love you,” she breathes.

“I love you, too,” he says, looking down at the top of her head adoringly.

* * *

 

For the next week, Nick pointedly ignores Rosalee and Monre. Adalind watches him hit “ignore” whenever Monroe calls with a twinge of sadness, even guilt. She goes to sleep at night next to him with her insides crawling, and accepts his kisses in the morning before he leaves for work feeling as though she doesn’t deserve them.

The thing neither of them is saying hangs between them in every moment: if it turns out she and Rosalee are right about the twinning spell, that means that _she_ did this to them. She stood in Rosalee’s living room and pointed the finger at Eve out of anger and jealousy, when all along _she_ was the one who had done the unforgiveable.

 _She_ had been messing around with dangerous, untested, unstable spells, using them for purposes they were never truly meant for. And now she was reaping the consequences…had been reaping them all along, really. Because it wouldn’t hurt so much to face losing this life—losing Nick—if she didn’t truly believe that she loved it, and him.

She had been living on borrowed time and undeserved forgiveness, and now it seems she is finally going to get the punishment she so richly deserves after all.

A part of her rebels, wants to crawl into denial like Nick seems to be doing and stay there forever.

 _I’m a good person!_ She can’t help but think. She is a good mother. A good…wife, really, in all but name. She is soft, and sweet, and kind. She helps people for no reason except that they need helping and she can. She is _trying_. She is _really_ trying.

 _Except you didn’t really have to try, did you?_ A vicious little whisper that sounds like Catherine steals into her thoughts. _Even when your powers came back this time, you didn’t have any trouble controlling yourself. All those things that seem to come so easily to the others—compassion, understanding, kindness, loyalty. You never had any of that, did you? Not until you slept with Nick. Even Diana. Even your own daughter. Did you really love her? Or did you just feel like you had a claim to her, because she was an extension of you?_

It’s that thought which scares her most of all; more than losing herself to that monster again, more than losing Nick. The thought of not loving her children, of being the kind of mother who can teach, and scold, but never hold or protect…that is terrifying to her. It is the last thing she ever wants to be.

“Please,” she whispers over her tepid coffee, to no one in particular. Nick has gone to work. Kelly is playing with toys on the rug Trubel brought back for them the last time she was in town. Diana is at her father’s house for the week. Adalind feels very small, and alone.

“Please,” she whispers again—to the universe, to god maybe, to herself…to anyone and everyone who might be listening. “Anything but that. Make me pay any price but that. Please.”

There is no answer. She takes a sip from her mug, and wrinkles her nose at the stale-bitter taste of cold coffee.

* * *

 

Monroe glowers down at his phone in frustration, a low growl emanating from between his lips.

“Come on, Nick,” he grumbles. “Pick up your damn phone.”

He’s been trying to call Nick all week, with no success. At first he thought the guy was just extra busy at work—with some non Wesen-related cases for once—but by the third day and the fifth missed, unreturned call, it was becoming clear Nick had no intentions of talking to him any time soon.

“Stupid stubborn obnoxious son of a _Grimm,_ ” he says when his sixth call goes straight to voicemail. “He rejected my call!”

“Nick again?” Rosalee asks, poking her head around the corner. “He’s still not picking up?”

“No, and now the little scheißding is sending them straight to voicemail.”

“Monroe,” Rosalee says severely, coming around the corner fully with a baby in each arm. “If we’re going to be serious about teaching the kids English, Latin, and German at home, you’ve got to _stop_ teaching them _those_ words.”

“Sorry,” he says sheepishly. He sighs. “It is just so frustrating! He’s never shut us out like this before. It doesn’t make any sense. Why won’t he let us help him?”

“I think maybe he’s afraid the cure will hurt more than the disease, so to speak,” Rosalee says sadly.

“Yeah, I get that,” he concedes. “But now I’m running up against all kinds of weird moral quandaries, like…do we just let him go, then? Let him keep living this…this enspelled life with Adalind, just because it makes them both happy? What would Nick say if he _weren’t_ enspelled? Would this make _him_ happy? Is this even really _our_ Nick?”

“Well,” she says slowly. “I think I can at least answer that much for you. The answer is yes, he is our Nick. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we can accept everything he does or says as the desires or actions of a man in his right mind.”

“So wait…should he be walking around the streets with a gun?” Monroe sounds truly worried now.

“I think he’ll be fine to do his job. At this point, I think he’s a bit like a functioning alcoholic, for lack of a better metaphor. He can do all the things he’s always done. He can seem rational and normal to most people…he may even _be_ rational and normal when it comes to most things. Just not when it comes to Adalind and their relationship.”

“So we have to fix him, then.” Rosalee shakes her head.

“Honestly? I don’t know if we _can._ He’s been under this spell for so long. Nearly three years, now. No twinning spell is meant to last that long, but the side effects of this one have lingered and taken on a life of their own. He’s built a life and a new sense of self around a falsehood caused by one of those side effects. They both have. It is going to take a lot to get them to let go of that and accept that they need our help. Especially Nick.”

“Why especially Nick?”

“Well, Adalind and Eve have both undergone massive changes to their personalities, things that affect the fundamentals of who they are. I think both of them, on some level, feel the wrongness of it. Even if they’ve found ways to come to terms with their situation, it will always feel like an ill fit.”

“But for Nick…his personality didn’t fundamentally change. His affections—and to some extent, his allegiances—just shifted. At least from an outside perspective. Internally, he’s still loyal to the same connection he had before. It is just that right now, that connection lives in Adalind instead of in Eve—or Juliette.”

“And of course there’s Kelly,” Monroe adds. Rosalee nods solemnly.

“Exactly. On top of everything else, he has this brand new allegiance—and massive responsibility and connection—to Kelly. And Kelly is Adalind’s, no matter what magic went on. He’s tied to her through his son whether he loves her or not. And since, right now at least, he _does_ love her…it is going to be extremely difficult to convince him that _not_ loving her is an option, let alone a desirable one.”

“Even if he knows it’s not real?”

“It feels real to him,” Rosalee says sadly. “That’s what makes this all so cruel. God, if Adalind weren’t already suffering I’d _really_ want to make her pay for this. She should never have been messing around with that kind of magic in the first place.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Monroe acknowledges. “But at the same time…” he shoots a meaningful look at the three babies they’re holding between their two sets of arms.

“Is there anything you wouldn’t do to get these little guys back if they were lost?” His voice always goes soft when he talks about the triplets. There’s a tone in it that a younger, more cynical version of Rosalee would have called soppy. Now, she just thinks of it as _love._ Absolute and unconditional.

“Nothing,” she says, just as softly. “I would tear the world apart to find them. So I do understand it on that level. I just…I hate to see our friends hurting and know there’s nothing we can do. And in this case, it feels like someone is going to end up hurt no matter what.”

“Yeah,” Monroe says sadly. “Yeah, I know. It sucks. But we’ll find a way to fix it. Just as soon as our stubborn Grimm calls me back.”

* * *

 

Hank looks pointedly at the buzzing cell phone on the corner of Nick’s desk.

“You gonna get that?”

“Nope,” Nick says just as pointedly, not even looking up from the case file he’s reading. Hank stares at him for a few moments, waiting for an elaboration. When none is provided, he looks around quickly before leaning in and dropping his voice.

“Look, Nick…what happened the other night—“

“They’re wrong,” Nick interrupts, in a tone that clearly states he does not want to talk about it anymore. But Hank can’t let it drop that easily, not when Nick is ignoring Monroe of all people for the fifth day in a row.

“Listen, man, I know you don’t want them to be right, I get it. But…what if they are? Wouldn’t you rather know for sure?”

Nick grudgingly looks up from the report, his eyes flashing annoyance. When he speaks his voice is barely a hiss.

“Do I want to know for sure that the love I feel for the woman I live with—the mother of my _child_ —is all a magical farce?”

“Yeah, I get that,” Hank acknowledges with a grimace. “It’s a hell of a question to have to ask yourself. But…you gotta ask it now, don’t you? I mean, you and Adalind—”

He trails off and holds his hands up defensively at the glare Nick shoots him.

“Hey…you know I’ve come around on her. We all have. She’s really made a change, there’s no denying that. But even so…can you honestly tell me, looking back on everything the two of you have been through, that you ever really felt like you guys made any sense? I mean…the stuff you have to have forgiven. You’re a good guy, but is _anybody_ that good? Does anybody really change _that_ much in the span of a few weeks?”

“I know it doesn’t make sense,” Nick says, almost angrily. “But what the hell about my life does? For that matter, which of _any_ of us has anything that could be called remotely normal? According to most of Monroe’s family, he’s married to Christmas dinner. You’ve been divorced four times, and you spend all your free time with Wu. Why is _my_ love life the one under the microscope?”

Hank tries to school the hurt and reminds himself that Nick’s in a bad place right now.

“Because unlike you, the rest of us are pretty damn sure we made those choices without any outside influence messing with our heads. What does Adalind say about all this?”

Nick shakes his head.

“Adalind doesn’t say anything lately,” he says. “She just looks sad, and she cries when she thinks I can’t hear her.” He sighs, running both hands over his face. “God, I don’t know what to do, Hank! I know I can’t just keep ignoring it and hoping it’ll go away. But I _cannot_ look the mother of my child in the eye and say ‘let’s figure out whether or not we love each other.’”

Hank grimaces sympathetically.

“I know. It’s pretty messed up,” he says. “But ignoring Monroe and Rosalee is not going to fix it.”

“Fine, I know…you’re right.” Nick throws up his hands in defeat. “I’ll call him after work. I just don’t know what I’m gonna say.”

“Maybe start with ‘sorry I’ve sent your last three calls to voicemail and deleted those without listening to them.’ He’s gonna give you hell about that.”

“Yeah,” Nick almost chuckles. “Don’t I know it.”

They go back to their reports in relative silence after that, but it’s a much easier, more companionable one than before. Nick resolves to call Monroe when he gets off work. Hopefully, Monroe will be willing to help him _dis_ prove this theory before it completely wrecks his home life. Again.

* * *

 

The spice shop is busy between nine and five on most weekdays, so Eve prefers to keep to the basement unless Rosalee really needs the extra pair of hands. Since she got back that has been a much more frequent occurrence, what with three newborns around. But she still spends a fair amount of time by herself, as is the case today. And today, she’s spending most of that time poring over Rosalee’s book collections, Nick’s journals, and Catherine Schade’s grimoires, looking for anything at all that might help clarify the exact nature of this magical interference plaguing them all.

“Im Hexentopf soll es sieden,” she murmurs. “Und dir ein neues ich beschieden. In a cauldron it should boil and give you a new self.” The list of ingredients follows. She knows them well: the head and tail of a swamp-dwelling snake, eye of newt and toe of toad, tongue of a dog, brain of a crow, henbane juice. A lizard’s leg, and an owl’s down feather.

She never understood why eye of newt seems to be in nearly every potion of Germanic origins.

“Ein Opferhaar sollst du dann pflücken, dich so mit 'm Spiegelbild beglücken. Now pick a victim’s hair; a mirror image they will make.” And the spell itself is completed by inhaling the vapors from the point of a conical hat.

She’s done the spell herself only a handful of times, but she well remembers that part; even when she was H.W.’s puppet, it made her feel like a sorority girl at a frat party, inhaling green-tinged smoke from some ridiculously-shaped apparatus.

She has read the actual text of the spell over and over, at least a dozen times now. She could recite it by heart. But none of that provides any additional clarity on how the spell itself allowed Adalind to remove Nick’s powers—aside from the obvious—or why that forged a link between Nick and Adalind instead of between Adalind and Juliette. After all, since Juliette’s was the likeness Adalind twinned, it stands to reason that any side effects should have been limited to only the two of them.

“Ugh,” she groans, feeling a slight headache coming on. She wills herself to ignore it and keep reading. “What I wouldn’t give for a chat with Catherine Schade right about now.”

“I might be able to help with that,” comes an unexpected reply from the direction of the basement door. Eve looks up and sees Adalind standing at the head of the stairs, uncertainty and determination warring on her pretty face.

“Nick won’t acknowledge it,” she bursts out, “But I have to. Whether it’s real or not, I love him. And if I did this to him—if I took away his _choice_ —I have to fix it. I have to at least try.”

Eve examines her face for a long moment before nodding. At that, Adalind breathes what almost sounds like a sigh of relief and rushes down the stairs, placing her bag on one of the nearby stools and turning to survey the books Eve has scattered over the table.

“The spell is in several books; it’s worryingly popular among Hexenbiests, apparently. But my mother used this book the most,” she says, drawing one of them nearer to her. “This is where I found the zaubertrank that transformed me into you.” She flinches a little as she says it, but Eve shows no reaction.

“I always feel like I should be apologizing to you more for all the things I put you through,” Adalind continues in a small voice.

“You apologized once,” Eve says. “That was enough. The fact that you want to undo what you’ve done is a better apology than any words, anyway. You really have changed.” She offers Adalind an almost-smile.

“Thanks,” Adalind returns. “Let’s just hope that wasn’t a side effect, too.” Eve tilts her head.

“Is that something you worry about? That the changes you’ve made aren’t permanent?”

“Well,” Adalind says as she scans the pages in front of her, “they _feel_ permanent. It all feels real. But that’s just the trouble…it _all_ feels real. I really love Nick, more than anything except my children. If that’s a lie…I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t anymore.”

“I understand,” Eve says softly. “I remember what it is to feel as though everything you thought you knew was a lie.”

“Oh, here it is.” Adalind reads from the page, seeming uncomfortable with the sudden sharing between them.

“A subtle subterfuge to assist in breaching all your enemy’s defenses. That’s the line that gave me the idea,” she admits. “As far as I know, this spell has never been used the way I used it before. It certainly wasn’t in any book. But Viktor—I thought he had Diana, and he told me that because Nick had used his blood to remove my powers, he was vulnerable. And then when I read this line, I knew what I had to do.”

“A breach of defenses,” Eve murmurs. Adalind nods.

“Yes. The reason the blood of a Grimm kills the Hexenbiest part of us is that it represents an absolute breach of our defenses. The sharing of blood is one of the few ultimately intimate physical acts. Nick could have just as easily removed my powers by…well—”

“But Nick would never do that,” Eve says, understanding.

“Exactly. Which is probably why Rosalee never even mentioned it to him.”

“So once Nick had used his blood to strip your powers—“

“—the vulnerability goes both ways. A Grimm would have to…to initiate it, so to speak. In the hierarchy of opposing forces, they’re the ultimate predators of our world. But once they’ve done so, they become vulnerable. Granted, the vulnerability was to the Hexenbiest part of me, which I had to get back first. Another incredibly rare, little-known ritual. So it’s no wonder we didn’t see all of these fun little side-effects coming. The prerequisites for the ritual I used to remove Nick’s powers are numerous, intricate, and unlikely to occur.”

“So that’s how Nick got pulled into all this,” Eve says softly.

“I’m sorry?”

“Oh…I was trying to figure out _why_ Nick would have been so affected by your twinning spell, given that I was the one you twinned. But now I understand. There were magical bonds forged between the two of you long before I was ever drawn into the picture. He took your powers: that linked him to you. You took his: that linked you to him. You used me to do it: that linked me to you. But the twinning spell was just a means to an end, and I was just a conduit for that spell. The bonds between the two of you were twice as strong, so the magical backlash was visited on him instead of on me.”

“Right,” Adalind says slowly. “And then when you reversed the spell—I’m guessing it was a literal reversal? You worked everything I did backwards, or opposite?”

“Right,” Eve says, frowning at the memory…one of her last as a normal human.

“Okay, so when you did that, you doubled the magical bond between us, and forged a magical bond between you and Nick as well. Once that happened, it created a sort of closed circuit of magical energy, twinning in two directions and power transference.”

“And that’s what happened,” Eve finishes. “That’s how…all of _this_ happened.”

Adalind is quiet for a long, tense moment.

“The magical theory is sound,” she finally says shakily. “That could be _exactly_ what happened. Which would mean—“

“That the emotional bonds between me and Nick were transferred to you. Not all of it, maybe. But enough. And your Hexenbiest powers—“

“—went to you. Again, not all of them, but—“

“Enough,” Eve all but whispers. “Enough to create something new and break what was there before.”

“I’m sorry,” Adalind whispers again, helplessly. Eve meets her pained blue eyes with cool, collected green.

“Don’t be sorry,” she says firmly. “No regrets.”

Adalind offers her a watery smile. “Easy for you to say. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“I don’t think anyone would agree with you there,” Eve says softly. “I’ve done many things I can never forgive myself for.”

“Yes, but you were pushed, and pulled, and _made_ to do those things,” Adalind insists, voice rising. It has been building for days now, the nausea and the horror and the shame. “No one made me do this. No one made me do _any_ of this—the plots, the schemes, the spells, the fighting! The things I’ve done to all of you, _you_ especially. How can you even stand to _look_ at me?! What’s _wrong with me?_ ”

Eve grabs her by the shoulders and forces Adalind to look at her.

“You’ve made bad choices,” she says firmly. “And you’ve done some terrible things. Maybe you can’t forgive yourself for that. But you do have to push past it. You have to deal with it and live with it and find a way to keep being the person Nick loves, the person Kelly and Diana need. Adalind!” She gives the other woman a little shake. “Are you hearing me?”

Wide, pained blue eyes gleam out at her from behind a curtain of pale hair. She nods minutely, and Eve releases her.

“So the question is, how do we fix it?”

“No,” Adalind contradicts her. “The question is, how do we _prove_ it? Nick isn’t going to just take our word for it. I’m sure you’ve noticed, he’s a master at avoiding things he doesn’t want to deal with. And he’s determined to find some other problem, or just ignore this one until it goes away.” She doesn’t look at Eve as she says it, so she misses the flash of hurt the other woman quickly schools away.

Eve looks down at the book under her hands.

“It’s understandable,” she says, voice dispassionate. “We like to believe we’re masters of our own fates. It would be…unsettling to think something so intimate can be so completely taken out of our control.”

“It can,” Adalind says firmly. “And he needs to face it. A part of me may not want him to. A really, really selfish part of me hopes that if we break this spell, nothing will change. But I can’t just go on pretending everything between us is fine if I know there’s a good chance it isn’t. I don’t want to live like that. If Nick isn’t with me of his own free will, I don’t want him with me at all.”

“I’m glad you feel that way,” Eve says neutrally. “I like to think we’re friends, Adalind. As much as any two people can be who’ve been through what we’ve been through. But I meant what I said, before, when I was still with H.W. I will always protect Nick, even if the threat is you. Especially if the threat is you.”

“I remember,” Adalind says with a small shudder. “You scared me, but…it was also one of the first things you ever did that made me kind of like you. And anyway, believe me, I have zero desire to ever go toe to toe with you again. You pack one hell of a punch.”

Eve almost cracks a smile at that.

“Okay,” she says. “Enough rehashing of the past. It’s time to fix the problems of the present. Did your mother have any books with information on methods of identifying the source or nature of a spell? Something more specific than just sussing out the symptoms? Something Nick couldn’t just handwave away?”

Adalind thinks for a moment before answering, brow furrowed in concentration. Then, her face lights up and she starts shuffling through the piles of papers and stacks of books, looking for one in particular.

“Ha!” She says at last, triumphantly holding the book aloft. It’s much smaller than most of Catherine Schade’s other books, and relatively nondescript. The woman was fond of grandeur, books decorated with skulls and dramatic coloring, books that screamed _magic_ just to look at them. Everything else on the table is several inches thick and bound in leather, reeking lightly of smoke and the rotted-sweet tang of old blood.

This one, though, is much smaller—perhaps a half-inch thick, if that—and bound in some sort of sturdy black cloth. Canvas, maybe. The outside is covered in hand-brushed symbols, but they’re relatively subtle. Black on darker black, hard to read without turning it so the slightly iridescent ink catches the light just so.

Eve squints at these symbols as Adalind unties the twine that holds the book closed; they’re not from any alphabet she recognizes, but she’s a far cry from being versed in all known human languages, much less whatever additional dialects or writing systems there are that are exclusively Wesen in nature.

Adalind must notice her focusing on the cover itself, because she smiles a little and turns the book so that she can stretch the cover toward Eve for easier examination.

“Don’t expect to see any languages you know,” she says. “Those symbols don’t mean anything. They’re just a little girl’s scribbles.”

“Yours?” Eve asks, finding it difficult to conjure the image of Adalind as a little girl, drawing on her mother’s books.

“Mine,” Adalind confirms. “My mother understood a lot of really random areas of magic, both Hexenbiest and not. She wasn’t much of a teacher, to be honest, but she didn’t hide anything from me. She gave me this canvas and some ink and told me to paint her a picture, so I did. I was so thrilled to be given the chance to do anything for her.”

Adalind’s voice has gone a little sad and wistful at the memory.

“Spells can be powered by all kinds of human emotions and energies. Hate, lust, fear, joy, rage…love. Anything that moves us can be harnessed to set other things into motion as well. A mother’s love for her child can be a form of protection, especially if the mother is powerful. But a neglected child’s desire for their parents’ approval can be used to charge a pretty powerful form of protection, too.” The wistfulness has taken on a bitter edge.

“Your mother… _used_ you to—“

“To power the magic that binds and protects this book, yes. It’s her book of protections, detections, cures, and counterspells. Anyone who got their hands on this would know how to break through all of her defenses. That would have made her intensely vulnerable, and she…she really hated that. So she put a powerful protection on it.”

“The child’s desire fuels the spell,” she continues. “And the more the child desires their parents’ approval, the more powerful the spell becomes. To make it work, you have to strike a very delicate balance between making sure your child is never content or sure in your love or appreciation for them…but you also have to make sure you never drive them away entirely. If they give up, the spell loses all of its power. But if the parent dies while the child is still seeking their love and approval, the spell is charged indefinitely, usually until the end of the child’s life.”

Eve doesn’t seem to have any words to fully describe what she thinks of that spell. But her face says it all: she looks equal parts horrified and disgusted. Adalind tries to shrug it off.

“I lived through it,” she says. “And I swore I would never put my own children through anything like it.”

“So…” Eve asks hesitantly. “If the spell is linked to your life…how do we access the book’s contents?”

“Oh, I can read it,” Adalind says, waving a hand. “Anyone of my direct bloodline can read it, actually.”

“Oh,” Eve says. “Well…what does it say?”

“There are a lot of defensive spells and potions here. A spell to repel foreign magic from your dwelling place…a spell to expose an enemy in your midst…oh, this is the potion to suppress a Hexenbiest’s powers temporarily. I don’t see anything about revealing the source of a spell—or its nature…”

She reads for a few minutes in silence, Eve trying her best to wait patiently and not hover. Finally, Adalind makes an interested little noise and begins to shove the book toward Eve before remembering.

“Oh. Right…sorry. Um…so there’s a zaubertrank in here that’s meant to reveal that which is hidden. Do you think we could use that on the three of us to reveal the nature of the spell that’s on us?”

“I don’t know,” Eve says uncertainly. “What does the recipe call for? Read it to me?”

Adalind reads: “A spell to reveal hidden truths. To a silver bowl filled with clear water, add a desert rose. Speak these words over the water times three: Lass den Nebel der Falschheit beseitigt werden. Die Wahrheit durch Licht des Tages bekannt sein.”

“Truth be known through the light of day,” Eve murmurs, translating. “So if we cast this, it will reveal the truth behind the spell? How, exactly?”

“I don’t know,” Adalind says, frustrated. “It doesn’t give any specifics. And spells like this one…they can be tricky. Sometimes the way they do things can be…really literal. Or really obscure.”

“So do we risk it? I mean…if we have no idea what it will do, is it worth it?”

Adalind looks down at the page for a moment, biting her lip. When she looks up, there’s a determined set to her jaw.

“We have to try it,” she says. “We have to convince Nick to let us fix this.”

“Okay,” Eve says. “So where do we get a desert rose in the Pacific Northwest?”

* * *

 

_The clearing is different; changed. She can’t put her finger on it at first. It’s still just as quiet as always; it’s still all grey and…_

_Just grey. That’s the difference. Something’s happened to the cabin. To the trees. It’s no longer a clearing at all, just part of a vast, barren landscape of dirt and ashes._

_The cabin is a blackened husk in her field of vision, still smoking. The only thing left of the trees are tall, spindly, shadow-like lines of crumbling ash reaching toward the sky. The lightest puff of wind would send them crashing to the ground, but there is no wind. The air is dead as well as silent, not even a slight breeze._

_“Adalind,” Nick speaks, and she whips her head around to face him. He looks pale and scared, green eyes wide in an ashen face. His arms are extended toward her, palms open and up…surrender. He’s afraid of_ her.

_She smiles. She reaches out a hand to him. A look of relief begins to replace the terror on his face._

_At least until their fingers touch._

_He gasps, and tries to pull away. She grasps his hand firmly and refuses to let him go, even when his flesh begins to peel away in long strips that fall around their feet, coiled and gleaming red like the discarded skin of a perfectly peeled apple._

_“Mine,” she whispers, holding on for dear life. He doesn’t hear her; he’s too busy screaming, and screaming, and screaming…_

* * *

 

Adalind opens her eyes and stares at the ceiling. Nick is still asleep beside her, snoring lightly, one arm thrown haphazardly across her.

She slides carefully out of bed, trying her best not to disturb him. He grumbles in his sleep and shifts, wrapping his arms around a pillow. It makes her smile, in spite of the memory of the dream still crawling through her mind, the sweat still clammy on her skin. Nick has always been a cuddler.

She sighs and heads for the bathroom, desperately feeling the need for a shower. She steps under the steaming water with a sigh of relief. It washes away the film of partially-dried sweat, but it doesn’t quite work to drown out the memories in the same way.

In the dreams, it is always the clearing. It is always her, and Nick. And it always ends in the same way.

Nick touches her, and dies screaming.

It’s starting to feel horribly like a premonition. Every time Nick touches her now, she has to force herself not to flinch and pull away. Every single time, she half expects him to shatter, or crumble, or burst into flames.

It’s starting to affect her waking hours as well as her dreaming ones.

By the time she steps out of the shower, she feels a little more normal. The sense of dread is no longer twisting her stomach into knots, but it is far from gone. It’s almost like that feeling is becoming a part of her, as integral as her bones.

She gazes into the mirror while she combs her hair, thinking. She should have the desert rose by the evening, and they’ve filled Rosalee in and asked her to let them use her workshop for the spell. Her only job is to get Nick there.

A task she knows will not be easy. He’s still been avoiding Monroe and Rosalee for the most part. She did hear him on the phone with Monroe the day before, but they haven’t seen each other. When she thinks about it, this might be the longest stretch they’ve gone without visiting Monroe and Rosalee at either their home or the spice shop in the last two years.

It makes her feel…unsettled. She’s grown used to Rosalee’s warm, no-nonsense presence, Monroe’s excitable nature. It feels wrong for Nick not to want to see them suddenly, especially when she knows that she’s the main reason.

 _Just another of the many ways I’m ruining his life,_ she thinks sadly. _What I don’t understand is…why is he holding onto me so hard? Is that part of the spell?_

She wants to tell herself it’s because what they have is _real._ She’s not above hoping that’s the case, either…that somehow, despite everything, they found a way to connect and truly love each other. That spell or no spell, Nick will choose her at the end of the day.

But she has to know for sure. She can’t just keep hoping that’s the case while Nick wanders through his life, bound to her through magic. That’s something the old Adalind might have done. And she does not want to be that person anymore. She’s determined not to be.

So when Nick wakes up, she will do what she has to do in order to convince him that they need to go see Monroe and Rosalee…and that is has to be tonight.

She finishes brushing out her hair just as she hears Kelly’s morning crying start up, and sighs. She replaces the towel wrapped around her with the robe hanging on a hook by the door, and goes to give her son his morning feeding and changing before he wakes Nick up.

When she gets there, though, Nick is already holding Kelly, smiling down at him as he rocks him gently in his arms and shushes his cries. He looks up at her as she crosses the room and gives her a brilliant—if somewhat sleepy—smile. She returns it halfheartedly, and sees him register it. His smile falters only the smallest bit, but it feels like her world is falling apart to see it. She can’t help but go to him immediately and wrap both arms around his middle, standing up on tiptoe to press a kiss to his jawline. The relief when she sees the tranquility return to his eyes is immediate, and addictive. She buries her face in his shoulder to hide her worried frown.

* * *

 

Eve is alone in the basement, setting up the worktable with everything they’ll need to cast the spell. She places the bowl of water carefully in the center of the table.

Instead, she reviews the spell’s text for what seems like the hundredth time that day, trying to glean some new meaning from the sparse words. She’s still unsure they should be risking this spell; after all, haven’t most of their problems arisen from inexperienced Hexenbiests playing with untried magic in ways it was never meant to be used, with no thought to the possible consequences? The spell the three of them are currently under is not even a single incantation or potion; rather, it’s the culmination of several years’ worth of highly experimental, haphazard rituals. Eve can’t help but feel as though they’re trying to cure a side effect without addressing the root cause of the issue.

But she also doesn’t think Nick or Adalind will listen to her on this point. Somehow, even though she knows full well that none of this is her fault, she still feels accused, still feels _blamed._ As though she’s somehow the source of the problem.

It is not a new feeling for her, by far. She’s felt that way for most of the last three years of their lives. Maybe even longer.

The creak of the door to the shop upstairs interrupts her maudlin train of thought, and she turns to see Nick standing on the top step, peering in. A grin spreads across his face when their eyes meet, and she feels—not for the first time—the tug of emotions that don’t belong to her, but to her former self. Juliette responds to Nick, always. She can’t help it. And it’s all Eve can do sometimes to keep that response in check.

As it is, she can’t suppress the tiny answering smile that spreads across her own face. Much to her frustration.

“Nick,” she says, and hears with an inward cringe the level of emotion in her own voice.

“Hey,” he responds, stepping onto the stairs and pulling the door shut behind him. He moves toward her, hands seeking refuge in his pockets as soon as he no longer needs them to hold onto the handrail of the rickety staircase.

“Where’s Adalind?” It pops out of her mouth before she can stop it.

“She’ll be here later. I think she said something about finding a desert rose?”

“Right,” she says, coloring slightly. “About that—“

“Listen,” he interrupts. “I’m pretty sure whatever you guys are doing here, I’m not going to like it. So will you just tell me?” He leans in toward her, eyes wide and green and earnestly pleading. “Please?”

And of course she cannot tell him no. She never could, much to her own sorrow.

“It’s a spell to reveal hidden truths,” she says without hesitating. “We want to use it to reveal the true nature of the spell we’re all under. Then we’ll be able to address it.”

Nick takes a breath.

“Okay,” he says. “So…what if I don’t want to do this? What if I’m happy with the way things are? Do I get a say?”

“No,” Eve says bluntly, finally losing her patience with this line of conversation. “Because this doesn’t only affect _you,_ Nick. None of this ever only affects you. I thought you would have learned by that by now.”

“I know that,” Nick responds defensively. “But maybe we shouldn’t go messing around with more magic, now that things are finally settling down around here. Is it so wrong just to want some peace?”

“Yeah, well maybe I’m not as at peace with the ways things turned out as you are,” she snaps. Her eyes widen in shock as she registers her own words. That was a Juliette thing to say, she knows. She can always tell by the look on his face.

She turns her back abruptly and buries her nose in a book, not really seeing the words or absorbing them so much as using them as a shield against further conversation.

Unfortunately, Nick—damn him—is just as stubborn about talking when he wants to as he can be about not talking when he doesn’t. She feels a warm hand on her shoulder, and reluctantly turns back to face that look he’s giving her. The look that asks, _Juliette?_

“Eve,” he says softly. “I don’t understand. In the Black Forest—the Other Place—you said that was all over for you. You made yourself pretty clear.”

“I did,” she says. “But that was when I thought I was making these decisions for myself, not being pushed and pulled around by magic. What if I’m not acting of my own free will? Don’t you want to know for sure?”

“Not if it means upending my entire life like this. What will it mean for Kelly? For Diana? Am I the only one who’s thought about that?”

“I truly hope you’re not suggesting that Adalind isn’t thinking about her children. You know better,” Eve says, sounding supremely unimpressed. “Why don’t you just stop whining and do the spell? If you’re right, it will just prove it. If you’re wrong, you might feel differently afterward.”

She sounds like Juliette again. She turns away from those searching eyes to glare at a random spot on the floor.

“Fine,” he sighs. “I’ll do the spell. I won’t even put up a fight. But when—not if, but when—this blows up in all our faces? Just remember this conversation.”

Before Eve can deliver a scathing retort, the door opens and Adalind stops short at the top of the stairs, just looking at them. Eve realizes belatedly that they’re standing very close, and what that probably looks like to the other woman.

She takes a very deliberate step back, and Adalind clears her throat and heads down the stairs.

“Okay,” she says when she reaches the bottom. “We should do this fast, before any of us change our minds. Here’s the desert rose.”

Eve takes the pale, ridged rock formation from Adalind’s hand. “Thank you.”

“Okay,” Adalind deflects, checking the spell to avoid Eve’s eyes. “Place it in the water.”

Eve does so, and the water shivers for a moment before going completely still.

“Okay, what do we do now?” Nick asks. Adalind steps closer.

“I have to recite this three times,” she says, waving a scrap of paper at him. “Here goes nothing.”

She steps up to the table and takes a deep breath, then begins reciting the spell in German.

“Lass den Nebel der Falschheit beseitigt werden. Die Wahrheit durch Licht des Tages bekannt sein.”

The water shivers again and then shifts, lifting from the bowl to swirl around and encompass the desert rose. Adalind blinks at it in mild surprise, and then continues.

“Lass den Nebel der Falschheit beseitigt werden. Die Wahrheit durch Licht des Tages bekannt sein.”

The water turns a burning red, so bright they can barely stand to look at it. Turning away slightly and squinting against the light, Adalind recites it one last time, her voice almost seeming to echo as she does so.

“Lass den Nebel der Falschheit beseitigt werden. Die Wahrheit durch Licht des Tages bekannt sein.”

As soon as the final syllable is uttered, the water constricts on the desert rose and seems to reduce it to dust before collapsing back into the bowl. The water swirls violently for a moment, then settles unnaturally quickly to a smooth, mirror-glass perfection.

Eve, Adalind, and Nick stand stock still for a moment, holding their breath, waiting for something else to happen. When it doesn’t, Nick makes a move toward the bowl—

—and the water explodes, tiny droplets of mirror-glass going in all directions. Eve feels one hit her face and hisses; it’s cold, painfully so, and feels as though it’s sinking through her pores where it touches. She hears Nick utter a similar grunt of pain, and Adalind’s surprised squeak.

Upstairs, four sets of infant lungs start screaming for all they’re worth. Footsteps thunder across the floor over their heads, and a second later Rosalee and Monroe burst through the door.

“What the hell?!” Rosalee rushes down the stairs first, Monroe right on her heels.

“What are you three _doing_ down here?” Monroe says angrily. “One second I’m waving goodbye to a customer, the next there’s this weird explosion of like…mirrored _fog,_ and now the kids are screaming their heads off and will not stop for _anything._ ”

“I’m sorry!” Adalind bursts out. “I don’t know what happened! We were just casting a simple spell to find hidden truths. I don’t know why it affected you guys upstairs, I thought it would be more localized than that!"

“So you’re saying my _newborn children_ have been affected by one of your sloppy spells?!” Rosalee is furious, and terrifying because of it. Adalind shrinks back from her voluntarily.

“Rosalee…we’re sorry,” Nick begins. “This is my fault, really. It was the only way they could convince me there was something really wrong with all of us.”

Rosalee gets right up in Nick’s face.

“Nick Burkhardt, I _swear._ If your stubbornness ends up doing lasting harm to my children, I will hunt you down like a filthy animal and _skin you alive,_ do you understand me?”

“Rosalee—“ Nick tries again, but is cut off by Monroe’s soft voice from behind Rosalee’s shoulder.

“Get out,” he says simply. They all stop and turn to him. He isn’t looking at any of them.

“Monroe?” Nick says, sounding surprised and hurt. Monroe raises his head and looks at Nick.

“I said,” he growls, “get _out._ ”

Nick shuts his mouth and nods, heading immediately for the stairs. Adalind and Eve follow, heads down, avoiding Monroe and Rosalee’s furious gazes.

At the top of the stairs, though, they have to stop short when they see Diana standing there with tears in her eyes.

“Mommy,” she says. “What’s wrong with me?”

“What do you mean, sweetie?” Adalind asks, going immediately to her daughter’s side. Diana looks at her, the tears spilling over and running down both cheeks.

“I can’t _do_ anything,” she says. “All my powers. They’re _gone._ ”


	4. Powerless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finding themselves in the midst of a magical blackout, Nick, Eve, and Adalind begin to realize how much of who they are now has been the result of magic gone awry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "None of us are who we used to be."  
> \- Eve, Grimm 6x12, "Where The Wild Things Were"

Adalind paces anxiously around the back room of the shop, wringing her hands and muttering to herself.

“How…how…how did this happen? How did this…how… _how did this happen?_ ” Her voice rises to a hysterical crescendo as she looks up and finds herself faced with Eve’s worried stare.

“I don’t know,” Eve says, infuriatingly calm. “Truth magic is unpredictable. It’s not always as simple as just spelling out what you want to know.”

“Yeah, you mentioned,” Adalind snaps. “What you _did not_ mention is that a truth spell could _remove_ _all of our powers._ ”

“And woges,” Rosalee puts in, glaring from behind the triplets’ bassinets. “Not to mention rendering all of my ingredients inert.”

Monroe’s rather vehement request for their immediate evacuation of the premises had been put on hold indefinitely once they discovered the full extent of the spell’s effects.

Adalind, Eve, Monroe, and Rosalee are unable to woge. The triplets are too young to woge yet, so it’s difficult to tell what effect, if any, the spell really had on them. The same is true with Kelly, who hasn’t shown any evidence of Grimm or Hexenbiest powers, at least so far.

But for a good half hour, Diana couldn’t stop crying, and the triplets and Kelly had been wailing for all their lungs were worth in solidarity. So on top of everything else, Adalind is trying to think around a pounding headache.

Whether Nick still has any powers remains to be seen as well, given that there is no one around he can test them on…but Adalind privately thinks it’s a safe bet that he can’t see woges anymore either.

It’s possible that she is _slightly_ losing it.

Which is not helping her daughter, she knows. That’s why she’s trying to calm down; Diana’s missing powers seem to have hit her the hardest. Much like the rest of them, certain of her abilities were unconscious; she didn’t have to actively use them to _feel_ them. She had a sixth sense, a way of knowing and seeing things—energies—that no one else could. Suddenly being without them must feel like losing her sight, or her sense of touch.

Unsurprisingly, she is not handling it very well.

Adalind tries to breathe, tries to wrestle her emotions under some kind of control. Her daughter is currently curled up in a ball on one of Rosalee’s cots, afraid to move. She had started with hysterical sobbing, and has only recently quieted down to a soft whimper.

But she still needs her mother, and Adalind knows she’ll be useless as long as she’s this upset and terrified herself.

 _Deep breaths,_ she thinks. _Deep breaths. Deep breaths, deep breaths, deep—_

“Aauggh!” She bursts out. “How the _hell_ is this supposed to help us uncover any hidden truths?”

There’s stunned silence for a long moment, as though in the commotion they had all forgotten the reason for casting the spell in the first place.

“Actually,” Rosalee says hesitantly—almost grudgingly, “If the truth spell somehow shorted out all possible kinds of magic in the vicinity, that means—“

“We’re not experiencing the side effects of the twinning spell anymore,” Eve finishes, realization dawning in her eyes. She can’t seem to help a surreptitious glance in Nick’s direction; it makes Adalind grit her teeth, but she bites back the words on her tongue.

“Okay, maybe,” Nick says, clearly frustrated. “But do we know how long this is gonna last? I mean…how far did it spread? Just the house? The street? The whole _neighborhood_? More? Am I even a Grimm right now?”

“Can you all keep your voices down, please?” Monroe grouses. “You’re upsetting the triplets and Kelly, and I was just getting them to calm down.”

Everyone winces, shamefaced.

“Okay,” Eve says more softly. “So how do we find out how far this has spread? And how do we find out whether Nick’s Grimm abilities were affected?”

“Easily,” Rosalee says. “We call Renard, and then we call Bud. If neither of them have noticed anything, I think it’s safe to say it hasn’t spread to all of the city. And if we can get one of them over here, we can have them woge in front of Nick and check whether his powers are active.”

Adalind finally stops wringing her hands and shoots Rosalee a supremely grateful look. Always the level head in a crisis, even when the crisis is actually happening _to_ her.

“Okay,” she says on the exhale of yet another deep, completely un-calming breath. “You call Bud, I’ll call Sean and fill him in.”

“Don’t mention anything about my powers,” Nick says quickly. Adalind nods, understanding.

None of them are entirely ready to trust Sean just yet.

Given a purpose, she suddenly feels much better. She pulls out her phone and heads up the stairs, intending to make the call outside where there’s better service.

Before she reaches the front of the store, she feels a gentle hand on her arm. Turning, she sees Nick’s worried green eyes.

“Hey,” he says. “Do you…feel any different?”

She searches his eyes for the answer he’s hoping to get from her, and then forces herself to take a hard look inward. She looks for that feeling she always gets, that incontestable desire to be close to Nick, the need to make his worries disappear, or at least help him share his burdens.

She digs down deep…and doesn’t find what she’s looking for. No urgency. No driving need. But there _is_ something there. Something small and warm that finds comfort in Nick’s eyes, remembers his touch with a possessive longing. Something that Adalind is suddenly afraid to let him see.

So she shoves it down hard and schools her expression into one of mild annoyance.

“Right now, Nick? I just feel worried. I’m not sure what it will do to Diana to be without her powers. She’s never lived without them before. I’m not sure she knows how.”

“Right,” Nick says, backing up from her immediately. “Of course. Make the call. I’ll go sit with Diana until you’re done.”

She musters a small, tired smile for his benefit.

“Thank you.”

Once he’s finally gone, she steps out into the chilly night air and pulls the door closed behind her. It’s early evening yet, but the sun is setting early as well and that autumn nip to the air has had plenty of time to set in by now. Her breath comes in little white puffs of cloud as she dials Sean’s number with shaky fingers.

“Captain Renard,” he answers in his usual bored, frustratingly superior voice.

“Sean?” Suddenly, she doesn’t know if she can talk around the lump forming in her throat.

“Adalind? What’s wrong? You sound…strange.”

“It’s…a long story,” she manages. “Listen, I need your help. Can you come to the spice shop right now?”

There’s a moment of hesitation.

“I can,” he finally says, slowly. “Adalind, what’s this about?”

“It’s…complicated. But I really do need you. And…and so does Diana.”

The change in his tone is immediate.

“I’m on my way right now,” he says brusquely, and hangs up. She looks down at the darkened phone screen and sighs, relief mingling with a small amount of dread.

“He is not going to be happy about this.”

* * *

 

Nick has to dial Bud’s number five times before he finally answers. When he does, there are the muffled sounds of laughter and music in the background: pub noises. Nick suppresses a groan; of course. It’s Bud’s poker night.

“Nick!” Bud squeaks in his usual nervous manner. “I wasn’t expecting to hear from you. Not that I’m not happy to hear from you of course, I just mean it’s a surprise. A nice surprise! I—”

“Bud,” Nick interrupts; he learned long ago that it may be rude, but it’s also the only way to get a word in edgewise once Bud goes off on one of his anxious tangents. “I need your help with something. Can you meet us all at the spice shop?”

“When? Bud asks.

“Tonight. Now, if you can make it,” Nick says, face twisting into an expression of rueful apology that Bud can’t see.

“Right now? I dunno, Nick, I’m a little, uh, busy…”

“Please, Bud,” Nick says, and he hears the edge of desperation and urgency in his own voice. “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t really need your help.”

There’s a short pause.

“I mean…okay, sure. Sure, I’ll be right over, Nick. Whatever you need.”

“Thanks,” Nick says, relieved. They hang up, and he heads back into Rosalee’s workshop with at least a bit of weight off his shoulders.

At least until he sees Eve, sitting perched on the edge of a chair in the corner, looking small and pale and perfectly contained. The only signs of her distress are the way her hands are pressed flat to the tops of her thighs, and a certain tightness around her eyes and mouth that only appears when she’s under considerable stress.

There was a time he truly believed she had no emotions. But he’s learned to read them, all the tiny flickers that pass over her face in a matter of seconds and half-seconds. He’s learned to watch her hands, where everything is a little less in check. She’s not hard to read, once he realized there was something there for the reading. They’re Juliette’s expressions…just much quicker, and smaller.

He feels that ache-tug-need again, like he always does when he looks at her. To soothe her worries. To protect her. To sit beside her and just be there, if that’s what she needs. He’s definitely felt it before, all along it seems. It’s one of the few things between them that never faded completely: they’re there for each other, they protect each other. Always, when it counts, and almost by instinct.

He isn’t sure he can blame pure instinct now, though. The pull he feels toward her is so much stronger than usual. So strong that he can’t seem to find a reason why he shouldn’t go sit down right beside her and take one of her hands in both of his.

“Hey,” he says, talking low and soft so he doesn’t disturb the babies—or end up being overheard. Everyone else is absorbed in their own stuff right now; Monroe and Rosalee are talking quietly in a corner, looking very serious; Adalind is comforting Diana, who has finally uncurled enough from the ball she contorted herself into to wrap both arms around her mother’s waist and bury her tear-stained face in said mother’s coat.

He had felt awkward, somehow, sitting there with the two of them. Like he was intruding on something he had no business being a part of. That’s what had pushed him to get up, to go try calling Bud again. And now, it’s clear they don’t need him.

So that leaves him free to stay right where he is…beside Eve. And when she looks up at him with surprised green eyes, he could swear he sees the smallest spark of hope flit through them, ever so briefly.

“You okay?” He asks. She smiles, small and careful as always.

“I’m not sure,” she says. “I’m trying to decide.”

“Do you feel…different?” He asks quietly, and finds as he does so that the answer to that question is extremely important to him.

So of course Eve hesitates before answering, oblivious to his bated breath and racing heartbeat.

“I don’t know,” she says again, finally. “I’ve spent so long under the influence of this magic without even realizing it; how would I know what it felt like to be out from under it again?”

“That’s a good point,” Nick says softly. “And I know what you mean. I keep trying to figure out if I feel different, but right now all I feel is…worried. Mostly about Kelly and Diana, but also that…”

He trails off in mid-sentence, as if realizing that he shouldn’t complete that thought in front of present company. But Eve sees the way his eyes drift toward Adalind.

“You still care for her,” she says, hating the melancholy so evident in her own voice. “I can feel it.”

“I do,” Nick admits, squeezing her hand just a little tighter. “But I’m not sure it feels…right? If that makes any sense at all. It feels like…like a rule I’m following. Like something I do because I’m supposed to.”

“You feel a sense of obligation to her,” Eve supplies. “Because of Kelly.”

“Well, it’s partly that. But also just…familiarity. We’ve lived together almost three years now. I _know_ her. I’m…used to her, if that makes any sense at all.”

Eve withdraws her hand.

“It does,” she says, a note of finality in her voice. She stands and moves across the room, toward the door that divides the front of the spice shop from the workshop. She walks through it, and only after she’s gone does Nick realize he’s been staring, watching her every move until she was out of his line of sight.

He shakes himself out of that daze and goes over to Adalind and Diana after all, resigned to endure the sudden awkwardness if it will help her calm down a little more before Renard arrives. The last thing he wants to contend with is an angry half-Zauberbiest on a protective fatherly rampage. Especially if it turns out he really _doesn’t_ have any Grimm powers left to fall back on.

* * *

 

When Bud arrives at Rosalee’s shop, he opens the front door onto a scene of utter chaos.

Diana is curled up on a cot in the corner, crying loudly. Adalind and Captain Renard are yelling at one another. Rosalee is trying to get between them, with Monroe just barely holding her at bay. Nick is hanging back from the chaos, holding onto Kelly and trying to soothe both him and Diana amidst all the yelling.

He stops stock still in the doorway, staring. Then, tentatively he takes a step inside.

“Hi, uh, guys? Hi, Bud here. Sorry to interrupt…whatever this is. But Nick, you uh, needed my help with something?”

“Yeah, Bud,” Nick says gratefully. “Thanks for coming.”

“Anything for you, Nick, you know that. So…what do you need?”

Nick steps forward and hands Kelly over to Adalind, who immediately uses the excuse to retreat from the Captain. Bud eyes him nervously; of all Nick’s odd medley of friends, he’s the only one Bud has never become quite comfortable with. Especially after the events of the previous year, he can’t help but give the man a side-eye and a wide berth. Why anyone still speaks to him, let alone trusts him after all of that, Bud has no idea.

Then again, maybe Nick doesn’t trust him so much after all, because he leads Bud into the other room before he says anything else.

“I need you to woge,” Nick explains quietly. “We’ve had some…magic issues. I just need to test something out.”

“Sure Nick,” Bud says readily. It’s an easy enough request, after all, the week of nightmares notwithstanding. He knows Nick’s a good guy, but there’s something primal in the way the sight of that black-hole stare chills him down to his bones.

He concentrates, fixes his gaze a little to the left of Nick’s head, and feels his face shift into its more animalistic Eisbiber visage. He holds it for a few moments, then shifts back.

Nick is staring at him like he’s seen a ghost.

“Well?” Bud says nervously. “Did it work?”

Nick looks a little sickly all of a sudden, but he musters a strained smile for Bud’s benefit.

“Yeah, Bud, it did. It told me what I needed to know, anyway. Thank you. Sorry to drag you away from your pub night.”

“Oh, that’s no problem!” Bud waves him off. “Don’t mind being inconvenienced one bit! Not that you’re an inconvenience, of course!” He sputters, flustered. Nick only chuckles at him.

“Of course,” Nick echoes. “You’re welcome to stick around if you want, but we’re just going to be, you know…panicking.”

“Oh, panicking. That’s what I do best! But uh…I gotta get back to the wife and kids, you know. But hey, you call me if you need _anything,_ Nick, alright? Always happy to help.”

“Yeah, thanks again Bud. See you.”

“’Bye everybody!” He says cheerfully, raising his voice slightly and addressing a wave to the doorway to the other room. Then he’s heading back out into the street, anxious to move his illegally-parked truck.

It’s not until he’s halfway home that he realizes: Nick’s eyes didn’t turn black when he woged.

“Oh man,” Bud says, anxiety spiking. “Not again!”

* * *

 

Back in the spice shop, Nick waits until Renard is occupied with Diana before turning to the rest of them.

“So. No Grimm powers,” he says quietly. “Again.”

“For how long?” Monroe sounds more worried than angry for the first time that evening.

“I have no idea!” Nick says, frustrated. “Apparently the spell doesn’t say! Which you both neglected to mention, by the way.” He stares pointedly at Adalind.

“Hey, that spell was supposed to convince _you_ to stop being pig-headed and let us help you, not take away all of our powers,” Adalind snaps. “We wouldn’t have needed it in the first place if you weren’t so _stubborn_!”

Nick looks taken aback at that.

“What are you talking about?”

Adalind reminds herself severely that she is holding a child.

“We were under a spell, and you refused to face it! We didn’t know how else to get through to you.” She starts out angry, nearly biting her words off at the ends, but by the time she’s done she just sounds plaintive and helpless even to herself. She’s so, so very tired.

Nick looks around, trying to find Eve to corroborate what Adalind is saying.

“Wait,” he says, realizing she’s nowhere to be found. “Where did Eve go?”

“She slipped downstairs when Renard arrived,” Rosalee says quietly. “She looked upset.”

“Dammit,” Nick says, and heads that way. When Adalind starts to follow, he holds up a hand.

“No…let me go alone,” he says. “I don’t think the three of us should be in the same room right now. There’s no telling what my stubbornness will drive you to two to do.”

Adalind winces at the bitterness in his voice, and watches his retreating back with a feeling of growing dread.

Rosalee goes over to her and holds out her arms.

“Hey, you want me to take Kelly and put him down for the night? It doesn’t look like any of us are going anywhere, and I have a spare bassinet that I keep here in case the kids are around…but since they’re all already in the ones from home, we have a spare.”

“Thanks,” Adalind says gratefully, her arms and back already feeling the strain from having held Kelly for a few minutes. He’s not a newborn anymore; in fact, he’s getting closer to a toddler. Before long he’ll be too heavy to carry around all the time. The thought puts a lump in her throat.

“Okay little man,” Rosalee says in a sweet voice as she takes Kelly. “Ooo, you’re getting so big! Let’s get you into a nice, cozy, warm bed, okay? Okay!”

Kelly whimpers a little at first, but quickly settles against Rosalee’s shoulder. Adalind watches her put Kelly down, rubbing her lower back a little absentmindedly as she does so.

Sean approaches her, Diana asleep in his arms with her head tucked into his shoulder. When he speaks his voice is quiet, but there’s a definite edge of anger still there.

“I should take Diana home,” he says. “She needs to rest after all this nonsense, and I need to look for a way to undo what you’ve done.”

“This wasn’t intentional, Sean,” she says for what feels like the hundredth time in the last half hour. She’s so _tired._

“You should never have been doing magic around her, especially not unstable magic you got from your _mother._ My God, Adalind. How could you be so irresponsible?”

“Me?” Adalind counters, forcing her voice to remain a whisper despite her indignation. “I’m irresponsible? Really? Need I remind you of the kidnapper you allowed to take our daughter? Or what about the monster you allowed to force a cursed ring onto my finger that would harm my children if I ever took it off? Or how about the campaign whore you brought home on a regular basis that our daughter then felt the need to strangle with her own bed sheets?”

“Keep your voice down,” he snaps. “And watch your language in front of her.”

“I swear to _god,_ Sean,” she says threateningly. “You need to leave. And Diana is staying here with me until we figure this out.”

“I am not leaving without her!” He nearly growls, apparently forgetting his earlier demand for quiet.

“You’re not taking my daughter anywhere!” Adalind growls right back.

“She’s _our_ daughter, and watch me,” he says, suddenly adopting the infuriating calm that had once made Adalind want to dig her fingernails into his jaws and pull until something popped.

“Please,” Diana whimpers. Immediately, both of them stop fighting and glaring at each other, all their focus on their daughter.

“What is it sweetie?” Adalind asks, voice gone sweet and soft.

“What do you need, sweetheart?” Sean echoes her, smoothing down her pale hair.

Diana looks up at them both with red-rimmed, puffy eyes, still leaking tears.

“Please,” she says again. “Just stop fighting.”

Sean’s face collapses into lines of remorse, and Adalind has to hold back tears of her own.

“Oh honey, we’re sorry,” she says, drawing Diana into a warm hug. Sean lets her, but doesn’t relinquish his hold completely. “We won’t fight anymore, I promise. We’re both just so worried about you.”

“I’m okay,” Diana says, jutting her chin out stubbornly. “I just hate it when you fight.”

“We know,” Sean says gently. “We’re so sorry, honey, it won’t happen again.”

Diana sniffles a little, then seems to calm down a great deal.

“Okay,” she says. “But Mommy? Can I go home with Daddy? I’m tired…I want my fluffy bed.”

Adalind bites her tongue in frustration, but smiles for her daughter’s sake.

“Of course, honey. Just as long as Daddy keeps his phone on at all times, so we can reach him…or so he can reach us, if your powers come back.” She shoots a pointed look at Sean. He nods, grudgingly.

“Okay pumpkin,” he says, hoisting Diana into a more secure position against his shoulder. “Let’s go home.”

Diana just nods and then buries her face in his jacket. He turns to Adalind.

“Call me the minute you find out anything more,” he says severely. She bites the inside of her cheek this time, and simply nods.

* * *

 

“Eve?” Nick peers into the darkened basement, seeking a shadow slightly darker than the other shadows. He senses the smallest bit of movement in the far back corner, and heads toward that slowly, groping his way along and trying not to stub his toes on anything.

“Eve,” he says again when he finally reaches her. “Why’d you run off?”

She’s sitting on the ground, back to one of the sturdy cement walls of the basement. He can’t see her expression in the dark, but he can feel her eyes boring into him.

“I needed to get away from all the…all the yelling.”

“Understandable,” Nick concedes, feeling certain that wasn’t what she intended to say. He sits down carefully next to her, his shoulder just barely brushing against hers.

“So,” he begins. “We’re not under a spell right now.”

“I know,” she says, and he can’t get a read on the tone of her voice at all.

“It feels…” he hesitates. “Does it feel…to you?” He’s not making any sense. But maybe she’ll understand him anyway. She used to be good at that.

“Yes and no,” Eve says after a moment. “Familiar, but…distant. Like a friend you haven’t seen in a long time.”

“Yeah…exactly,” Nick sighs. He tries to relax against the wall at his back, but finds it an unforgiving perch.

“So,” he starts again, feeling awkward. “Are you…?” _Who are you?_ He doesn’t ask that, has more sense than to ask _that,_ but he swears he can _feel_ her eyes snap to his in the darkness, as though she heard it anyway.

He can almost picture them: pale blue-green, sharp and glinting as a butcher’s knife. Piercing right through him, in search of answers.

“I feel…I don’t know what I feel,” she says, seeming reluctant to talk about it. “I keep thinking it will hit me, all at once. Like when you healed me and broke through H.W.’s conditioning. A dam with break, something overwhelming will sweep in and reassert itself, and I’ll be someone new again. But so far I’m just…sad, mostly.”

“Yeah,” Nick says, voice dipping with melancholy. “I know what you mean there, too.”

“Homesick,” Eve mumbles. Nick turns toward her.

“What?” He asks.

“I just…don’t you sometimes wish we could just _go home_?”

That pulls him up short. He has barely thought about their house since he sold it. It was too painful, too full of memories that cut deep and left him feeling like he might bleed to death. But now he lets the memory wash over him: the warm, golden light and the way it reflected off the polished wood surfaces inside. The creaky door Bud had fixed for them, the way it always smelled like pies because his wife had made it her personal mission in life to make sure they never went more than a day without one.

The floors he could walk in the dark, half-asleep, the stairs he knew by heart so he could avoid the squeaky ones when he had insomnia and didn’t want to wake anyone. Trubel’s room at one end of the hall, her gruesome collection of notebooks lined up neatly on the shelves. And at the other end of that hall…their room. Bright and clean and comfortable. Airy. A place he used to always feel safe.

But every inch of that house had been invaded by pain and fear, by blood and death and sadness. He had brought most of it just by being what he was. And she…she had brought her fair share as well. That would always be the house where his mother died, where _she_ died.

But before that final, hideous tidal wave of loss, that house had been a refuge. It had been their home.

A wave of longing so powerful it almost feels like nausea sweeps over him.

“Home,” he rasps out. “Yeah, that’d be…yeah.” _God. I would give anything to go back to that home. To that life. To….to you._

Eve breathes in sharply, almost as if she can hear his thoughts. He feels the tension in her ratchet up a notch through the shoulder pressed to his. He wishes he could do something, anything, to soothe it away, to give her back some of the things he had taken, a little at a time, over the last seven years.

He can picture her in their kitchen, that day when his Aunt Marie came to visit. When she brought his family’s dark, bloody legacy right to his front door. Red hair framing her heart-shaped, smiling face. Dimpled cheeks. Green eyes sparkling, wiping her hands on a dish towel, voice full of unreleased laughter, always. Warm and bright, soft and kind, the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen, before or since.

He turns his head toward the sound of her breath and strains to see the outlines of Eve’s face through the darkness. In many ways, she is the polar opposite of Juliette: sharp, reserved, all harsh lines and deep contrasts, flinty-eyed and dark haired. She’s had to change to survive, maybe more than any of them. This world wasn’t made for a sweet, normal girl who worked with animals and loved Valentine’s Day.

And yet, there are moments when those difference seem incidental, unimportant. When he peers at her now through the darkness, he feels that pull between them stronger than ever, as though whatever was muting it has been not just removed, but obliterated. There’s a glimmer of softness in the sharp glint of her eyes, an echo of the person he’s been missing most for the last three years.

But more than that—and more surprising—is the fact that he finds himself drawn in not just by the remnants he can see of Juliette, but by the rest—the Eve parts—just as much. By the sharp point of her chin, the thin-pressed line of her mouth that looks like it’s always holding something back. The way her face is a puzzle he feels compelled to solve, always. He wants to fit his hand to the angle of her jaw, wants to tease the secrets from her lips. He wants _her,_ he realizes _._ Not just because she holds all that’s left of a woman he once loved. He wants her as she is _now._

 _“_ Eve,” he whispers, leaning in closer. “I—“

Whatever he’s about to say is cut off abruptly when the lights suddenly flick on above them. He squints at the sudden brightness, glaring up the stairs at the intruder.

It takes him a moment to register that it’s Adalind. She’s standing stock still at the top of the stairs, one foot extended and frozen in mid-air, as though she forgot what she was doing from one step to the next. Her face looks very pale, and her blue eyes are zeroed in on the two of them, taking it all in: how close they’re sitting, the guilty expressions on their faces, Nick leaning toward Eve in a way that must be unmistakable.

For a second, there’s a flare of fury that almost makes her look frightening…like her old self. But it’s gone in the next instant, replaced by a resignation that quickly crumples into grief.

And then she’s gone, turning on her heel and fleeing the open doorway in the space of a few seconds, before Nick has time to speak up, to even try to explain.

There’s a long pause where Nick knows he should be going after her. He shoots Eve an agonized look, wanting nothing more than to stay right where he is.

But Adalind…she’s the mother of his son. She’s the woman he’s lived with for nearly two years now, shared a home and a bed with. She’s the person he held close just a few nights ago and vehemently declared his love for.

That moment seems very dark and far away now, like he’s seeing it through a fog. Or like the fog has lifted, and everything now seems bright and sharp and clear in comparison.

He knows he should go after her. He _knows._

But a small part of him is starting to remember, with that same clarity that’s been missing for so long, just how they got to this point in the first place.

And _that_ part of him really, really wants to get angry.

And the part that pulled him toward Adalind is gone entirely. Or, at least, the focus of that pull has shifted—

“Oh.” Nick says, as the truth finally hits him. He shakes his head, almost laughing, almost ready to cry. He looks at Eve like he’s never seen her before.

“Oh god.”

“Nick?”

“You were right,” He says, voice barely above a whisper. “My god…you were both right.” He sits back fully against the wall again, his entire body feeling suddenly loose and unhinged with the sheer weightless, wondering feeling of the realization.

“Everything I’ve been feeling. That desperation to hold onto Adalind. It was all just…just…”

“A spell,” Eve whispers back. Her eyes are wide and troubled as they meet his.

“Nick, I—“

“Juliette,” he murmurs. “She—“

But Eve’s face closes down at the mention of her old name, and she turns her head away.

“I was afraid of this,” she mumbles, so low Nick doesn’t quite catch it.

“What?” He asks, leaning toward her. She stands up abruptly, nearly knocking him backwards. Every line of her is tense, radiating frustration, or perhaps pain.

“You should go and find Adalind,” Eve says without looking at him, her voice gone icy cold. “She seemed upset.”

“Eve—wait,” Nick tries, but she’s already walking away, quickly, across the room and up the stairs. She does not stop or look back at him once.

Nick stares at the empty doorway, unsure of what exactly just happened. He doesn’t have much in the way of mental space to devote to it ultimately, though. His head is a swirl of memories from the last three years, all of them seen through a brand new, harsher light. It is an onslaught, and it leaves him breathless with a strange mixture of horror and remorse.

Juliette, shifting back to her own form after they performed the ritual to get his powers back. It was the first time they had touched each other in months.

Juliette, stumbling out of the woods after they rescued Monroe, bloody and breathless, face too pale, eyes too bright. He’d never even asked what happened.

Juliette sitting stiffly on the couch in their living room with a split lip, finally telling him the truth. He had panicked and pulled a gun on her, all but confirming her worst fears.

Juliette, afire with pain and loss that quickly melted into rage when she saw the way Nick ran from the very sight of her. He left her alone, in a house where she had just been attacked. She had begged him to wait, to stop, and he hadn’t listened.

Juliette, left alone in their shattered living room moments after telling him the truth about her transformation. He hadn’t talked to her for days after that.

Juliette, laughing in his face when he said he loved her. Juliette, telling him in a mocking voice to go be a Grimm. Juliette looking at him with eyes full of betrayal as he forced her to tell the others before she was ready, before _they_ had even really talked about it. Juliette, standing in what was once their home, feet from where his mother died, beautiful and terrible.

Juliette, begging him to kill her.

Juliette, limp in his arms, bleeding. Looking at him with her eyes glazed with confusion and fear, as though she had no idea how she had gotten there or what was happening.

Juliette’s voice breaking on his name one last time.

“Oh god,” he gasps. There are hot tears burning searing trails down both his cheeks. It’s as though he’s seeing it all again, from her perspective: the last piece of her life that had been untouched by his darkness, her _self,_ had been stripped away from her. Everyone she thought she could trust had recoiled from her in fear, because of _him_. She had been living god knows where, unable to go home, unable to reach out to anyone for help.

 _She was so alone,_ he thinks, his mind a haze of pain and regret. _She was so alone, and_ I _did that to her._ I _ruined her life and then left her alone to pick up the pieces, to cobble together whatever she could from it all._

She had gone to the _Royals,_ of all people. That’s how desperate she had been, how angry, how lost.

No wonder she retreated from him at the mention of Juliette’s name. It’s a reminder of every horrible, selfish, thoughtless thing he ever inflicted on her life.

 _No regrets,_ he remembers her saying. After all that, everything he did. And she still smiled at him at the end of the world, and held him close, and whispered “no regrets” with her dying breath.

She doesn’t remember that, but he does. He remembers everything, and for the first time in years there’s nothing clouding his judgment. There’s no veil between his mind and the truth of his actions.

It’s that last memory which finally propels him to his feet and up the stairs.

“Eve!” He calls out as he goes. “Eve?” Rosalee comes around the corner and shushes him furiously, pointing toward the workshop where the kids are sleeping. He winces and half-whispers an apology.

“Sorry Rosalee,” he says, "Did you see which way Eve went?”

“She ran out of here a minute ago, just straight out the front door without even saying goodbye. Why? What happened, Nick?”

“I’ll explain later,” he says, already walking toward the door. “I have to find her. Can you watch Kelly until I get back?”

“Kelly’s not here, Nick,” Monroe says, entering the room behind Rosalee. “Adalind left a few minutes ago and took him with her.”

That brings Nick up short. He turns and looks at them both, forcing himself to take a deep breath and remain calm.

“Did she say where she was going?”

“We just assumed she was going home,” Rosalee says. He resumes his half-run for the door, and Rosalee follows. “Nick, hey, just slow down a minute and fill us in. We can help you.”

And he should, he _knows_ he should. Monroe looks concerned, and Rosalee looks nearly distraught, and he should let his friends be there for him.

But he can’t slow down. Eve could be disappearing from his life again right this second, and Adalind—

He shudders, unable to fully wrap his brain about the thought. He was afraid of her, not so long ago, before the spell that scrambled his brains and twisted his emotions to make room for her in Juliette’s place took that fear away and replaced it with a false love.

But now…now, he remembers that fear. It wars with his more recent memories of the gentle person he’s been living with all this time. The mother who loves her children and would never do anything to hurt them.

 _But she could still hurt you,_ a voice in the back of his mind is whispering on a relentless loop. _She could take Kelly away, make sure you never see him again. He’s too young to remember or miss you, but you…you would know, and you would suffer._

And he knows from experience that she’s far more likely to sting when she feels hurt or betrayed.

He has to find Adalind before things get any more out of hand.

“I promise I’ll explain everything later,” he says, giving them both one last apologetic look before he rushes out into the night, dialing a cab as he goes. He just hopes he can find Adalind and talk to her before she does anything drastic.

* * *

 

Adalind paces back and forth across the floor of the bunker, twisting her hands in the hem of her shirt mindlessly as she does, mind spinning as it replays what she saw in the spice shop basement. Not even an hour free of the magic that bound them together, and already Nick had retreated to his Juliette.

Which left Adalind where, exactly? Alone, and angry, and…hurt, if she’s honest with herself.

_(She knows something in her is waking up, stretching, but she doesn’t have the willpower to push it back down this time.)_

She never intended for the magic she worked to remove his powers to have this kind of effect. She never even knew it _could_. And she had meant it when she said she didn’t want Nick to be with her if it wasn’t his choice.

She had been too afraid to show him how much of it was real for her, for fear that he wouldn’t feel the same. But…even still. She had hoped. She had hoped that it wasn’t _all_ magic. That some of what they felt for each other was real, and would remain. Maybe just enough to make him choose to stay. To make him choose _her._

_(That twisted thing climbs out of her gut, slithers up into her mind and nestles behind her eyes where it doesn’t belong.)_

She feels like a fool now. Because the horrible truth is that it _was_ real, for her. Almost all of it. Whether it grew underneath the magic over their last three years together, or whether she had always, on some level, harbored something other than hatred for the Grimm…the fact is that the magic is gone, and Adalind is pacing around the home they share together fighting tears at the thought of Nick leaving her to go back to his old life. Like nothing ever happened.

Like nothing between them had mattered at all.

She doesn’t think she can do that. She doesn’t think she can watch him be happy with Eve and not want to set something on fire. Them. Herself. The whole world, maybe.

_(She thought she could have the powers without the price. She was wrong, wrong, so very wrong.)_

Gradually, it registers that the fabric between her fingers has grown warm, then entirely too hot. When she looks down, she realizes that it’s smoking, turning black beneath her hands. She drops it immediately with a small shriek, holding out her hands as far from her body as she can get them and staring at them in horror.

It doesn’t hurt. They don’t appear to be burned at all. When she touches the tip of one of the fingers on one hand to the skin on her opposite arm, it doesn’t even feel warm.

But there are two small, oval-shaped scorch marks on her shirt’s hem.

_(Wrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrong she doesn’t want to be this doesn’t want to let this become all that she is again.)_

She takes a few deep breaths and tries to calm herself, think of something, anything else besides what she saw in that basement.

It does not help that Kelly starts crying a few seconds later.

She sighs and swallows the lump in her throat, wipes the tears from her cheeks, and goes to his crib to see what’s wrong.

“Hey baby,” she says softly, and starts to reach in to pick him up. She stops just short of touching him though, thinking of the burn marks on her shirt. Instead, she turns his mobile on and starts humming to him, softly.

He quiets after a few minutes, but she stays by his crib anyway, watching him sleep and thinking troubled thoughts.

She’s afraid to touch her own child. Afraid she’ll hurt him. And if Nick finds out…

“—he’ll try to take you away from me, baby,” she says to Kelly’s sleeping, oblivious form. “And maybe…maybe he should.”

_(Yes, come on, fight it Adalind.)_

She shakes her head abruptly.

“No,” she blurts, a little too loudly, her voice hard and almost unrecognizable, even to herself. Kelly whimpers and shifts in his crib, but thankfully he doesn’t wake up. Adalind leans over and presses a kiss to his forehead.

“I won’t let them take you from me, baby,” she says, voice soft again. “I’ll never let them take you from me. I promise.”

There’s only one way to ensure she gets to keep that promise. When this spell is broken, things will go back to the way they were. Nick will go back to loving her, to refusing to let them make him _stop_ loving her.

And she will do everything in her power to make sure that they never do.

_(She knows something in her is dying slowly, pushed down into the dark beneath a terrible weight. It begs her for help, begs for it’s life…but she just doesn’t care enough to pull it up from where it lies, slowly smothering.)_


	5. Night Work

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick races home, hoping to find Adalind. Meanwhile, Hank gets a call about a case.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilery notes at the end.

Nick peels into the lot next to the bunker’s entrance, throwing the car into park and scrambling to get out of it. He rushes across the cement, forgetting for once to make sure no one is around, and throws himself at the door to the building. Every second seems to stretch out for far too long, and all he can do is try to move faster and fight his panic, hoping against hope that he’ll find Adalind at home.

He remembers all too well what it felt like, to come home to an empty crib, stuffed fox toy on the floor like it was dropped in the rush to leave. And a note on the floor. _I’m sorry. I love you._

When he pulls open the metal doors and sees her sitting at the kitchen table, back to him, he breathes an immediate sigh of relief.

“Adalind,” he breathes, rushing across the room towards her. She turns at the sound of his voice and rises to meet him. He stops himself just short of touching her, his fight-or-flight response shifting into gear immediately at the sight of her face. He blinks, surprised at the strength of his own reaction. He searches that face for a moment: calm, concerned blue eyes, smooth forehead, unhappy mouth. Nothing to suggest danger, only hurt. Disappointment. He makes a conscious effort to relax.

“I was hoping I would find you here,” he says instead of addressing the massive elephant in the room. She blinks up at him, waiting. “Monroe and Rosalee said you left with Kelly, that you seemed upset—“

“And you thought what?” She says, and she sounds angry. He fights the urge to take a step back. “That I would hurt my child, Nick? God…don’t you know me at all?” She takes a step toward him, closing the gap he created, eyes searching his, full of pain.

“Do I?” He rasps, fighting every instinct in him screaming _danger._ “Do you really know me?”

“Your birthday is June 18th. Your favorite color is blue. You’re allergic to penicillin. You’re a profiler but you worry that being a Grimm has caused your regular, human skills to get rusty.”

“I—“ Nick starts, but Adalind is not finished. She keeps right on talking as though he hadn’t spoken, glaring as if daring him to interrupt her again.

“You eat ham and cheese sandwiches when you’re upset, even though you hate ham and cheese sandwiches, like you’re punishing yourself. Your favorite food is Thai takeout, and it does not have to be good Thai takeout, you aren’t picky. You don’t sort your laundry, so half your socks have been dyed other colors. You throw your underwear into the drawer without folding them. You like to watch police procedurals and point out the mistakes. You snore like a freight train if you’ve had more than one glass of wine with dinner.”

He just stares, taken aback completely.

“So I don’t know, Nick,” she finishes, all the anger draining out of her voice, leaving only exhaustion. “Do I know you well enough?”

He looks at her for a moment, unsure of how to respond to the barrage of reminders that they have spent the last three years getting extremely close. Adalind is beautiful even in her anger, and he reaches into himself, looking for that _thing_ in him that used to tug him toward her, anchor him to her, a grounding influence that hadn’t felt like chains or a cage at the time, but a lifeline.

But that thing is gone. It never really existed in the first place. Yet she’s looking at him now like that isn’t true for her. Like maybe the magic wasn’t all there was between them. His heart constricts painfully, in sympathy or out of loss, he doesn’t know.

He just knows that in this moment, he doesn’t love her. Quite the opposite. It’s all he can do not to flinch away from her, even now when her true face is invisible to him. Not that her true face has bothered him for a long time now. Or at least, it didn’t until they cast the spell.

“Adalind,” he tries, voice full of apologies and not sure where to start. She holds up a hand to stop him.

“No,” she says, eyes flashing with renewed anger. “You are not going to say anything to me right now. Right now, you are going to listen.”

He snaps his mouth shut and watches her with wide eyes. The fear is pounding in his temples, acutely reminding him that he has no defenses right now. The fact that she is also without her powers is barely a consolation. Some of the worst things she ever did to him were when she had no powers at all.

“We were under a spell,” she says. “We know that for sure now. But we’re _still_ under a spell. We may think we know how it works, but do we really? No. So whatever you have to say to me, whatever big revelations you think you’ve had in the last few hours, whatever you may be thinking you have to do: you’re going to keep it to yourself.”

“You are not going to do anything rash or stupid or _unforgiveable_ until this spell is reversed, and we can find a way to remove the magical side effects for real. Then, if you want to leave me, fine. You want to be with her? Fine. I won’t stop you. But until then, you are not allowed to break us. Do you understand?”

He nods automatically, mouth half open as he gapes at her. He had expected yelling, a real fight maybe, or for her to have vanished. He hadn’t been expecting this. And he doesn’t know how else to respond. A large part of him feels like he’s looking at an enemy, like everything she says can only be a trap. But there’s a small part, a part that whispered _I love you_ desperately into the darkness as though he could will it to be true, which feels like he owes her this much at least.

She considers him for a moment and then nods to herself, as though deciding she is satisfied with his answer.

“Good. Now, Kelly is fine. He’s sleeping. I would never hurt my child, Nick. You should know that, if you know nothing else.”

“I’m sorry,” he blurts, not knowing what else to say. He’s torn between every instinct in his body telling him that she is dangerous and not to be trusted, and the memories from the last three years of every night he’s slept next to her, completely vulnerable. Clearly the magical side effects affected them both in different ways; presumably, if she had wanted to hurt him, she could have. Then, or now.

And she hasn’t done that, at least not yet. Maybe he can give her the benefit of the doubt.

He takes a deep, slow breath, steps away from her to sink onto one of their bar stools and put his face in his hands. His head is pounding.

Barely a second later, his phone rings. He groans and pulls it out, looking at the caller ID.

It’s Hank, calling at 1am. It can only be a case.

Reluctantly—all he really wants is to crawl into his bed and sleep forever—he hits “answer.”

“Burkhardt,” he says wearily into the receiver.

“Nick,” says Hank, sounding equally groggy. He was probably woken up by a call from the precinct only a few minutes before. “We have a case. Meet me at the crime scene, I’ll text you the address. And uh, if you haven’t eaten breakfast…don’t.”

He hangs up, and Nick looks at the phone, a little bewildered. Hank sounded unusually upset about a murder investigation; sure, the things they see every day are far from easy. But after the last seven years of dealing with the worst of both the Wesen and human worlds, it’s a rare case that makes Hank sound like that.

He sighs and pockets his phone, standing without turning to face Adalind.

“I have to go,” he says tiredly. “That was Hank. We have a case.”

“Go,” Adalind says quietly. “And Nick?”

He pauses, halfway to the door, listening.

“Be careful,” she finishes. “You don’t have your powers. If it _is_ a Wesen case, you may not know until it’s too late.”

“I’ll be careful,” he promises, not knowing what else to say to her. Then he beats a hasty retreat to his car, feeling like a coward with every step.

* * *

 

Hank gropes for his jeans in the dark, trying to be as quiet as possible. That plan goes up in smoke when he trips over a shoe and goes flailing, banging his shin but good on the footboard of the bed.

He winces when his guest stirs and groans a curse at him through the dark. A moment later, a lamp goes on, and Wu is half-glaring, half-squinting at him in the sudden brightness.

“It’s one in the morning. Come back to bed.”

“Can’t,” Hank says apologetically. “Got a case.”

Wu sits up a little more, suddenly seeming wide awake.

“A case, and they called you and Nick? What, is the night shift on vacation?”

“Nah, I think it’s a weird one. Renard made the call.”

Wu shakes his head, then gets up and starts looking around for his discarded clothes.

“What’re you doing? You can go back to sleep,” Hank protests.

“Nope.” Wu throws him a shirt. “I can’t go back to sleep once I’m awake anyway. Why should I let you and Nick have all the weird fun?”

“Fun,” Hank huffs, pulling on a sock. “Right.”

“But you’re getting us coffee on the way,” Wu says severely.

Hank has to suppress the urge to respond with “yes dear.” They sound like an old married couple.

Hank grins. He could get used to that.

* * *

 

When Nick pulls up to the crime scene, it’s immediately clear that this is no ordinary murder. It is at the edge of the park, one of those few, lesser-tended areas of the border that gets muddy to the point of perilousness whenever it rains. It being Portland, it’s raining right now, and Nick sees several forensics techs high-stepping their way around the scene in department-issue wellies, lugging equipment that makes them sink an extra inch into the muck.

In addition to the forensics team, there are half a dozen police cars, three ambulances, a fire truck…and Hank standing at the edge of the yellow tape, waving him over. He steels himself for something truly gruesome and then gets out of the car and heads across the damp ground toward his partner, ignoring the swarm of rubberneckers and reporters that try to allay him on his way.

“What’ve we got,” he says once he’s close enough to Hank to speak without shouting over the low din of the rain and milling crowd.

“Hello to you too,” Hank says, mostly amiably. “Wu just finished briefing me. He’s heading over to the coroner’s office now to get an ID on the bodies and dig up whatever info he can on their backgrounds.”

Nick raises an eyebrow. “Sounds like Wu’s doing about as much detective work as we are by now,” he says carefully. Hank grins.

“Yeah, he’s pretty much indispensable. Between us, I’m trying to convince him to take the detective’s exam and apply for a promotion.”

“That’s amazing, Hank,” Nick says, with the first real smile he feels like he’s mustered in days. “But uh…wouldn’t you miss seeing him in his uniform?”

Hank looks at Nick sharply and clears his throat, flustered.

“Uh, anyway. Quadruple homicide,” he says, conveniently changing the subject. “Whole family, looks like: man and woman in their late thirties and two kids who can’t be more than six and fourteen, all found face down in the mud with their insides on the outside.” Nick grimaces.

“Any witnesses? Suspects?” He says, ducking under the tape and stepping gingerly around the edges of the crime scene. He takes it all in, mentally cataloging the few evidence markers he sees already placed nearby.

“No suspects so far. We don’t even have a definitive ID on the bodies yet. No direct eye-witnesses either, though there’s a homeless guy who says he was woken up by screaming. Nearest residents corroborated the noise and the approximate time, though interestingly…none of them called it in.”

“So who did?” Nick asks, confused.

“The homeless guy,” Hank says, fixing Nick with a look that pretty clearly says “can you believe that?” “Called it in on one of those emergency comm stations they installed all over the park last year.”

“Okay. So…let me get this straight. I can see at least three houses from right here that would have been within earshot of whatever was happening. At least one of those would have a clear view of the park as well. And not one of them called 911?”

“That’s about the size of it,” Hank says. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Yeah,” Nick says. “I think we should have a more in-depth chat with the neighbors.”

* * *

 

They arrive at the precinct about an hour later, just as the bottom is really falling out of the sky. Nick thinks gratefully that at least the forensics team had enough time to gather most of the evidence before they left the scene. Portland’s unpredictable weather has washed away the evidence in more than a few cases over the years.

He heads to his desk, shrugging out of his wet coat and hanging it on a hook near the door as he goes, Hank at his heels. Wu is waiting for them with files in hand, which he drops in front of them with an air of triumph as soon as they’ve sat down.

“Meet Natalie and Adam Bergman, ages thirty-four and thirty-eight, respectively. They just moved to town last month. Until then they lived in Los Angeles with their two kids, fourteen-year-old Karli and six-year-old Darren.”

Nick flips the file open and begins to read, taking in the photos of the Bergman family. Natalie Bergman smiles up at him sweetly from behind a curtain of long, blonde hair, her arms around the neck of a dark-haired man who has to be Adam. Their children are like mirror-images of them: a skinny little blonde girl, clearly going through that stage where she has more limbs than she knows what to do with…and a little boy with dark, messy hair who looks just like his father.

He barely hears Hank and Wu; something about the photos is troubling him.

“Damn,” Hank says, sounding sickened. “What kind of person does that to a six-year-old kid, huh? I mean…I’ve seen some things in this job. But I’ve never seen anything as…as…”

“Brutal?” Wu supplies, grimacing sympathetically. “Speaking of which, the coroner is waiting for you. She put a rush on this one, considering the circumstances.”

“Right,” Nick says. “We’ll head down there now.” Of course the coroner put a rush on it. An entire family moves to the city and ends up dead in the park a month later? It is the kind of case that makes headlines, and Nick already knows he’ll probably be getting called into Renard’s office before the day is out. It is just a matter of how long it takes the mayor to get wind of the situation.

“Hey,” Hank says as they make their way down to the morgue. “You okay, man? You’ve been unusually quiet.”

“Yeah,” Nick says, shaking himself out of it as best he can. “Just thinking about the case. And, well…things are not so great at home at the moment. That uh…thing we were discussing, at Monroe and Rosalee’s the other night? Turns out they were right.”

Hank looks at him sympathetically. “Man…I’m sorry. I know that’s not what you wanted to happen. Listen, we’ll talk about it later, okay? After work? Over a few beers.”

“Sure thing,” Nick says. He takes a deep breath just before they step through the doors of the morgue.

“So,” he says, voice strained from trying to breathe only through his mouth, “Wu said you already have something for us?”

The M.E.—an older, rotund woman with a jolly disposition but a wicked sense of sarcasm—gives him a tight, slightly ironic smile over the examination table.

“Watch the tone of surprise,” she says drily, before directing them to the subject on her table. Nick steels himself before looking, but he still can’t stop the involuntary intake of breath when he sees that tiny little boy—or what’s left of him—laid out on the table. He has to swallow a sudden, powerful gag reflex.

“Yeah,” the M.E. acknowledges his attempts not to vomit in a sad, resigned sort of voice. “Does not matter how long you do this job. Seeing a kid on my table always takes me back to that awful, nauseous feeling I got the first time I performed an autopsy in med school.”

Nick can only nod; he’s afraid if he opens his mouth he really will vomit. He can feel Hank eyeing him with concern, but he stares resolutely at the M.E. and nods for her to go ahead with her report.

“Okay. So, we have a six-year-old male, of course. A little underweight for his age group, but not unhealthy overall. Well, except for the obvious.”

Nick glares at her. She clears her throat and continues.

“Sorry, just trying to keep some distance. We have several contusions and lacerations on the victim’s back, some of them so deep they came right out the other side. The edges are jagged and irregular, suggesting bite or claw marks of some kind rather than any traditional cutting instrument. There’s no lividity around the edges of the wounds, so it appears he sustained all of his visible, external injuries post-mortem. I also found this,” she picks up a plastic evidence bag, “on the victim’s body.”

Nick breathes a sigh of relief, thankful at least that the kid didn’t have to suffer through whatever had mutilated him so completely. He takes the offered bag and holds it up to the light, peering at the single long, silvery-white hair within.

“Cause of death?” He asks faintly, still trying not to breathe through his nose.

“Well,” the M.E. begins, and Nick just _knows_ this is going to be a Wesen-involved case. “That’s the strange thing,” she continues. “There are no internal injuries to his face, neck, or limbs. All the damage is confined to the torso. Same with all three of the other victims as well. No perforations of the brain, larynx, throat, or any of the major arteries running through the arms, legs, or neck. No signs of head trauma at all. Which makes the most likely cause of death...drowning.”

“Drowning?” Hank asks, surprised.

“That’s right,” she says. “Or at least a combination of drowning and suffocation. It is hard to say really, given how torn up the lungs were after the fact. But there was the presence of water in the lungs, as well as mud, leaves, and grass stuck in the nose, mouth, and throat of each victim.”

“So they could have done either, then?” Hank asks again. “Drowned in water, or suffocated in mud?”

“That’s what I’m telling you,” the M.E. says, a little wearily now. “And then something came along and tore them up, but good.”

“Okay,” Nick says. “Thanks. We can use that when we talk to the witnesses. Let’s go.”

* * *

 

The interrogation room is chilly this time of year, causing Nick to suppress a shiver even when wearing a jacket. The first witness, Ellen Greene, is already sitting in a chair at the table when they enter the room, arms wrapped around herself in an attempt to insulate against the chill better than the thin sweater she’s wearing can do on its own. She’s small, pale, and mousy, with frizzy dark hair and big, frightened eyes that twitch back and forth between him and Hank constantly.

“Ms. Greene,” Hank says, voice taking on that soothing good-cop quality he’s so adept at portraying. “You live across from the park, correct? Just a couple of blocks away from the location of the crime scene?”

“Yes,” she says softly, trying to focus on him for more than a few moments and failing, switching back to Nick again before finally settling her eyes on the grungy tabletop.

“And you told officers at the scene that you heard screaming,” Nick says, his voice harder, more strident. Bad cop. He sees her shoulders tense and draw inward, as though she’s trying to make herself even smaller. She does not quite dare to look up at him as she nods jerkily.

He hates this part: scaring probably innocent people into talking. He always has to remind himself of the ones who turned out not to be innocent at all, just play-acting. Catching those makes momentarily scaring a few nice, ordinary people worth it. At least, that’s what he tells himself.

“So why didn’t you call 911?” He asks, pushing a note of accusation into his voice. He knows full well why people choose not to call. Fear of cops, fears of getting involved, fear of making themselves a target. There’s always a reason, most of which he understands. But still, he has to ask.

“I…I don’t…”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Hank says gently, leaning forward a little. “You’re not in any trouble here, Ellen. We just want to know what you heard. If you saw anything. It could really help us catch this guy before he hurts someone else.”

“You think it was a man?” She asks timidly. Hank blinks, surprised at the question, and cuts his eyes over at Nick, who raises his eyebrows and shrugs minutely.

“Given the viciousness of what was done to the victims,” Hank explains patiently, “It’s statistically more likely to be a male perpetrator. Why? Did you see something that makes you think it might’ve been a woman?”

“I…” she starts, pauses, and then starts again, swallowing hard and hugging herself even tighter. “I don’t know what I saw.”

Hank suppresses a sigh and looks back at Nick, who steels himself inwardly and then goes to work.

“You don’t know what you saw,” he says, voice flat with disgust. “Did you see this?” He slams the file in his hands down on the table, already open to the page with the post-mortem photographs of the Bergmans. Ellen jumps about a foot in the air and lets out a tiny shriek, staring transfixed with horror at the bloody images. Her wide eyes are shiny with unshed tears.

“You heard them screaming,” Nick continues relentlessly, his voice low and dangerous. “You heard Natalie and Adam screaming for help while their children were torn apart right in front of them, and you did _nothing_.”

The tears in Ellen’s eyes break free, streaming silently down her cheeks. She looks up at Nick finally, and he’s struck by the note of defiance there in spite of her obvious fear.

“That’s not what happened,” she says, voice shaky but clear. “It wasn’t the parents screaming. It wasn’t the kids either. It was…it was not like anything I’ve ever heard before. It didn’t even sound human.”

She shudders minutely, then drags her eyes away from Nick to look at Hank instead.

“Please,” she says. “I didn’t call because…because I don’t want people to think I’m crazy. I was too far away to see anything clearly, I swear. But what I heard…it must have been a trick of the wind, or an echo…or…something else. Because no human being could sound like that. It’s just not possible.”

“This sound,” Hank says, looking profoundly disquieted, “can you describe it a little more? Was it high-pitched? Low-pitched?”

“It was high,” she says without hesitation, glancing nervously at Nick. “High but…rough. More like shrieking than screaming. And it went on _forever._ Not like someone screaming over and over, more like…like one long, really bad note of music. I swear it must have lasted at least three minutes.”

Hank looks up at Nick, and Nick nods.

“Thank you, Ms. Greene,” he says, his voice much gentler than it was before. “You’ve been a lot of help.”

They gesture for her to leave and she gets up and fairly scurries toward the door. They follow her out, pulling the door closed behind her. Just before she leaves them, though, she turns and looks directly up at Nick.

“Ask the others,” she says softly, a note of urgency in her voice. “As the other neighbors about the sound. They had to have heard it. There’s no way anyone within a mile of that place didn’t hear it.”

“We will,” Nick says, and she nods jerkily again before walking away. He stares quizzically after her for a moment before turning back to Hank.

“You know,” he says, “I would be willing to bet she’s a Maushertz.”

“Bet?” Hank asks. “What do you mean, bet? Don’t you know?”

Nick grimaces, remembering he hasn’t filled Hank or Wu in on their current situation yet.

“Yeah,” he says. “About that…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're reading this for the Nadalind, this is the point where you're probably not going to enjoy the story much further. Fair warning!


	6. Twisted Fate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eve loses herself in memories of another life.

Eve walks slowly, head lowered, through the pouring rain down a familiar street. She doesn’t bother looking at the address numbers or the signs for any of the cross streets; this walk is muscle memory, every step well-traveled and known completely. The lovely old Victorian houses with their neatly-kept lawns, the clean white sidewalks, the twisting limbs of moss-covered trees reaching for the sky…it’s all achingly familiar, but also terribly distant, fuzzy. As if it’s all something she dreamt once and barely remembers.

She stops finally, tilts her head just enough to peer up at the pretty two-story house with its sage-and-cream paneling, white trim, and rust-colored porch steps. The door, once a lovely chocolate brown, has been re-painted a pale lilac by the current owner. Eve wrinkles her nose; it clashes terribly with the surrounding walls.

She remembers the day they first saw it. The realtor had not been all that enthusiastic, clearly doubting their commitment to buy at all, and even less convinced they would buy _this_ old house. But she had insisted on seeing it. Nick had clearly been dubious but he’d humored her, and it was just…like magic.

She’d walked through the empty, dusty rooms with Nick’s hand warm and sure around hers, and it had just felt _right._ It had made _sense._ She could see past what the house was to what it could be, what their lives could be in it. And when she looked at Nick, she could tell his mind was swiftly changing. He could see it too.

“It’s an old house,” the realtor had said, clearly trying to explain away the general state of neglect. She barely acknowledged the woman with a soft hmm, running her hands over the smooth wood of the banister of the staircase.

“It may be old,” Nick said from behind her, examining the archway that opened into the living room. “But it has good bones. I bet this house could survive just about anything.”

Of course, at the time it hadn’t occurred to either of them that this house would have to survive an ogre, a dragon, rampaging Hexenbiests, or any number of highly-trained assassins. They’d been so _young._ So young, and so innocent, and so free.

She remembers the day they moved in, too. Nick tried to carry too many boxes at once, and it rained in the afternoon, which just made everything slippery and dangerous. They ended up having dinner sitting on a bare mattress in the living room, eating takeout at the restaurant that would become their favorite Thai place.

They slept on that mattress for two weeks straight while they gradually unboxed everything and put it away, at least partly because neither of them were too keen on trying to get it up the stairs to the bedroom.

It was, as the realtor had said, an old house, and not in the best repair when they bought it, good bones notwithstanding. How else could two dumb kids in their mid-twenties afford to buy a house? But they’d worked hard on it together, cleaned it up, made it theirs. They’d picked out paints and argued over fabrics for curtains, and fallen into bed exhausted every single night for that first year. Exhausted, yes, but also happy. Satisfied. They knew they were making something beautiful together, a place to live their shared life. They’d only been dating a year and a half, and they wouldn’t even talk about marriage for another two…but they knew already. She did, and she could see in the way Nick looked at her that he did, too. They were it for each other. They were built to weather the storm, like the house.

She smiles sadly. Their worst worries back then had been bills, and Nick working too much overtime to try and make detective faster. Funny what a difference a few years and some supernatural interference can make.

She looks up at the house now, buffeted by rain and wind, and thinks _good bones._ It will indeed weather this, and many more, storms. But she and Nick had snapped like pine, torn up from the roots.

So maybe it’s not that far off, she thinks, to say that remembering that life is like remembering something from a pleasant dream: warped and foggy, like gazing through frost on old glass. Only now, looking back, does she notice the cracks that were there from the beginning.

The way Nick avoided talking about his past, his parents, his Aunt Marie. The way he avoided anything, really, that went too far beneath the surface. He always seemed so happy and full of light, but now she knows it was a mirage, a reflection. He had mirrored her own happiness back at her, and she, wanting so badly to believe, had never questioned it. She had trusted blindly, loved indiscriminately, and it had, quite literally, killed her in the end.

That, above all else, is what she cannot forgive Juliette—forgive _herself_ —for. Not the fire and blood and violence. Not the betrayal. Not the pain she caused. She knows now that none of that was truly under her control, therefore it cannot truly be her fault.

But everything that came before? The arguments they never had because she didn’t want to start a fight? The lies she never confronted because she wanted to trust? The number of times she put her own feeling and needs and wishes aside, ignored them, let them fester, because everything and everyone else always seemed so much more important? The _source_ and impetus for all that rage that came pouring out, when control was ripped away from her at last?

She _was_ in control back then, and she did nothing. Nothing real, anyway. She put up a token resistance here and there and told herself she was the voice of reason in the group, the reminder they all needed sometimes. But she could have done more, and there was so much more at stake than how a case went, and she knows that now.

And that is the hardest of all to face, the ultimate sin she can never, ever forgive.

The worst part is that a small piece of her still wants, still hopes. Even before, under the weight of an unknown spell, it was there. She wanted to protect Nick. She wanted to love him, even. She just didn’t know how.

Now she does. But now she also sees the real thing standing in their way, the reason they will never work, no matter how thoroughly they manage to cleanse themselves of all magical coercion.

She didn’t know who Nick was when they first met. _He_ didn’t know who he was. They do now. And god help her, she loves who he is. With all his flaws and contradictions, with all his impulsiveness and avoidance and trust issues…she loves all of it, all of _him._ It’s not some façade she’s fallen in love with this time; it’s reality, beautiful and terrible as only reality can be.

But a part of her has always feared that he wouldn’t feel the same, and now she knows for sure. _Juliette,_ he called her. Juliette, the person he searches for every time he looks at her. Juliette, the person he wants and needs and loves. He cares for _her_ , Eve, only because she wears Juliette’s face and holds her memories. Maybe, just maybe, he even finds her useful as an ally.

But he does not love her. He does not want her. He can’t, not while his heart is still full of the woman he lost so suddenly and so horribly.

And she doesn’t know what to do with a love that has nowhere to go. She isn’t sure she knows what to do with any kind of love, really, but especially not this kind. She doesn’t know how she can look at him every day for the rest of her life and know he will always be hoping for a flicker of someone else’s ghost in her eyes.

Even knowing this, she can’t seem to make herself move from the sidewalk in front of their old house. A part of her wishes she could walk up those steps, through that door, and back in time. But she can’t do that either, so she just stands there, in the rain. Watching, remembering. And loving helplessly.

* * *

 

Hank sits down heavily at his desk with a slightly exaggerated sigh. It had been a long and difficult day. Between the gruesome crime scene that morning, the disturbing conversation with the M.E., and a string of witness interviews that afternoon, he had a pounding headache and few real leads to show for it.

He likes to think of himself as a persevering person, but he’s also a realist and a damn good cop with a lot of experience under his belt. And right now, that experience is telling him that they will probably never know who or what drowned that family and tore them to shreds.

So all he really wants to do is find Wu and drag him home to bed. But he knows if he doesn’t at least start his report for this case he could forget important details. As unlikely as it is that they’ll ever get justice for the Bergmans, he’s damn sure not going to let it be because he was negligent.

With another sigh, he leans up enough to extract his notebook from his jacket pocket, and then settles back again to review his notes from the interviews before typing them out.

A half hour later, he’s in the zone and almost done with his report when a hand falls onto his shoulder. He jumps a little in his chair, then turns to see Wu grinning down at him. He offers a tired smile before turning back to his report.

"Didn’t anyone ever teach you not to sneak up on a guy wearing a gun?"

"It might have come up once or twice," Wu says, gleefully unrepentant. He glances around briefly before he plops into Nick's chair and makes himself at home. "That the Bergman case report?"

"Yeah," Hank says wearily. "No other case takes priority over that right now. Family of four torn apart in the park? People want answers. Which means the mayor wants answers. Which means Renard is breathing down our necks on this one."

"Well, I see _your_ neck," Wu points out. "Where's Nick?"

Hank grimaces.

"Man, you do not want to know."

Wu shifts in his seat, leaning more into Hank's space. "Well when you say it like that, I definitely want to know."

Hank sighs yet again. He's doing a lot of that tonight.

"Nick is out looking for Eve," he says, lowering his voice so no one passing by will easily overhear.  "She ran off last night, and he's worried about her." Wu rolls his eyes.

"Nick needs to get over his savior complex," he says matter-of-factly. "If anyone tried to accost that woman in a dark alley, I would pity _them_."

"Normally I'd agree with you," Hank mutters. "But right now, Eve doesn’t have any of her powers. None of them do."

"Wait a second," Wu says, leaning in even further. "What do you mean _none_ of them have their powers? What the hell did I miss?"

"I ask myself that about twenty times a day around here," Hank says with a wry smile. "So you know how Nick was being weirdly stubborn about the whole Adalind love spell thing?"

Wu nods, face twisting a little with disgust at the reminder.

"Yeah, that's gross," he says. "What about it?"

"Someone thought it would be a brilliant idea to use a truth spell to make Nick see reason, and—"

"Wait wait wait, _what_?" Wu interrupts, holding up his hands for Hank to stop and looking somewhere between appalled and annoyed. "What is wrong with our friends, Hank? Have none of them ever watched a single episode of _Charmed?_ "

"I'm pretty sure you're the only one who had that much of a Shannen Doherty obsession, man."

"Julian McMahon," Wu corrects offhandedly. "Be that as it may, any dumbass who's ever watched television at all should know this! Truth spells are a universally terrible idea. Either you find out way more truth than you really wanted or needed, or the spell works in some really unpredictable way that ruins everything."

"Yeah, that sounds about right," Hank says wearily. "The spell was supposed to reveal the hidden truth about Nick's connection to Adalind. Instead, it stripped Adalind, Eve, Monroe, Rosalee, Diana, and presumably the babies of _all_ forms of magic, including their woges, Nic’s Grimm abilities, and whatever other magic was affecting Nick, Adalind, and Eve."

Wu's eyebrows are reaching for his hairline.

"So...whatever weirdo magical side effects were making Nick and Adalind act all lovey-dovey for the last two years..." He trails off.

"Yep," Hank confirms. "Gone. And apparently there was a _moment_ between them--"

"Nick and Adalind? Or Nick and Eve?"

"Nick and Eve. And Adalind saw it, and ran off. Nick found her already, but now Eve has run off somewhere too and he can’t seem to find her."

"Jesus Christ," Wu says. "It’s like being in high school with these guys."

"Tell me about it."

"So when you finish your report, you gonna go help him look?"

Hank sighs. Again.

“I probably should. I really just wanna go home…but I probably should.”

Wu chuckles.

"I figured. I'll tag along. If everyone on our little team of superfriends is having their brought-down-to-normal day, it might be useful to have a lycanthrope along."

"Just as long as you keep your teeth and claws to yourself," Hank says amiably.

"Always," Wu grins wickedly. "At least until asked otherwise."

* * *

 

Nick glares down at his phone, willing it to ring. He’s been sitting in his truck in the precinct parking lot for the last half-hour, wracking his brains for places she might have gone.

He’s called Rosalee at the shop and Monroe at home with the triplets; neither of them have seen her. Adalind would have called him if Eve had shown up on their doorstep…he hopes. He’s been trying to call Eve herself all day as well, with no luck so far. He’s checked everywhere he can think of that she would go—Monroe’s, the spice shop, the bunker. He even asked Renard if he had seen her. So far, he’s found nothing.

It is not as though she has an apartment in the city, or a Hadrian’s Wall safehouse to hide out in. All of those were torn apart by Black Claw. She can’t exactly go _home_ —

He freezes. _Of course._

_Do you sometimes wish we could just…go home?_

“Home,” he whispers to himself. “She went home.”

He sticks the key in the ignition and the truck roars to life. He throws the gear shift into reverse and backs out of his parking spot, then shifts it into drive and speeds out into the street, wincing a little at the squealing of his tires.

The drive is relatively short and achingly familiar, even though he hasn’t driven it over two years. He slows down once he turns down the familiar street that runs through their old neighborhood, scanning the sidewalks anxiously, peering into every corner, hoping to catch a glimpse of her.

He finds her right in front of the house.

She’s curled up at the base of one of the trees, her head leaning back against the rough bark. Her face is half-concealed within the deep hood of her jacket, but he knows the curve of that cheek, the shape of that mouth. He pulls his truck up to the curb and puts it in park, not bothering to turn off the engine before he hurls himself out of the truck and across the yard to her side.

“Eve!” He calls out to her. There is no response. He kneels in the damp grass, leaning forward and hesitantly pressing a hand to her cheek.

He draws back immediately, horrified. Her skin is icy cold; only the shallow rise and fall of her chest convinces him it isn’t the cold of a dead body. Still, she doesn’t respond; not to the touch or to his voice when he calls her name once more.

He examines her more thoroughly, looking for a cause. Her clothes and hair are damp; her skin is clammy as well as cold to the touch. There are dark shadows under her eyes and her lips are turning a frightening shade of blue. When he leans in to listen to her breathing, it’s light and wheezing.

 _She must have been here all night,_ he thinks. _The kind of thing she could easily endure as a Hexenbiest, but as a human? How did nobody see her out here? Oh god. Oh god oh god._

“I’ll be right back,” he says quietly. He runs back to his truck and turns the heat up as high as it will go, then makes sure the windows are rolled up all the way. He opens the passenger side door and then runs back to Eve’s side, kneeling once again. He gets his arms under her back and legs and pulls her in close, struggling to his feet. He stumbles over to the passenger side of his truck and deposits her as gently as possible in the passenger’s seat, careful not to hit her head on the door frame. She slumps limply in the seat, and he feels his panic ratchet up another notch.

He takes a deep breath, willing himself to keep calm enough to function. Carefully shutting the passenger’s side door, he runs around to the driver’s side and, somewhat awkwardly, manages to climb in beside her and prop her up into a sitting position at the same time. He tries to impart some warmth to her face and hands, pressing his palms to her forehead and cheeks and rubbing her stiff fingers between his own. Then he puts the gear shift back into drive and very slowly pulls away from the curb, driving as carefully as possible while supporting Eve’s weight against his right side.

“Hang on, Eve,” he says quietly. “You’re gonna be okay.” _Please, please be okay,_ he begs silently. _I can’t lose you again. Please stay with me._

The drive to the hospital is arduous and seems agonizingly slow, even though objectively speaking he probably makes it there in record time. He ignores all the signs pointing him toward patient parking and pulls right up to the emergency room doors, extricating himself carefully from the truck without injuring Eve before running around to her side to pull her out. Everything is moving too fast and too slowly at the same time, running together, becoming a meaningless blur.

He stumbles into the emergency room yelling for help, but barely hears himself. There are nurses and a gurney, then, and insistent hands prying her from his arms. There are voices asking him questions: what happened, what’s her name, what’s his name, does she have any prior medical conditions or allergies, on and on. Then there are voices asking him to please step back and let them do their jobs, and there’s a terrible distance between them, growing larger as they wheel her away behind a pair of swinging double doors.

He collapses into one of the uncomfortable waiting room chairs, completely exhausted. The nurse is reassuring him someone will get him as soon as she’s stable. He’s nodding mechanically, and then he just stares at the floor for a while, trying to replace the image of Eve’s pale, still face with something, anything else.

Horribly, unbidden, the image that comes is of another time she was lying, pale and still, in his arms. Blood leaking from the corners of her mouth. Air whistling from her punctured lung.

He swallows a gagging sensation and pulls out his phone, in need of any kind of distraction, in need of his friends. He shoots off a text to Monroe, Rosalee, Hank, Wu, Trubel, Bud, hell…even Sean and Adalind. He lets them know that he found Eve and that he had to take her to the hospital. For Trubel, he takes the time to fill in some of the background details of what’s been going on in Portland for the last few days before sending.

 _Days._ The thought sends him reeling all over again. Was it really only days ago that Eve returned to town? Was it really only last night this spell was cast? It feels like a lifetime.

Maybe because he’s changed so much in such a short period of time, he acknowledges silently. Before Eve left, things between them all were good. Good, but…strange.

Maybe the magical bonds holding the three of them in their current patterns were weakening somehow, even then. He remembers feeling Eve’s eyes on him like a magnet, always tempting him to stare back. He remembers how the touch of her hand could steady him, ground him like nothing else, give him strength and faith. He remembers a deeply frustrating, nameless longing that eluded his attempts to understand it, all the harder the more he tried to reach out and grasp its meaning.

He remembers wondering what might have been if Eve herself had not decided to put a finite ending on their failed relationship. What _unforgivable things_ he might have done.

But then she had left, and for a while that feeling faded. It didn’t come back immediately even when she returned. But now…

Now he’s had his entire life flipped around on him, and his connection to Eve is stronger than ever. Undeniable.

Only yesterday he had been convinced he was deeply, truly in love with Adalind Schade. Only yesterday he had refused to believe anything else was possible. And yet here he is in a hospital waiting room, hands clenched together in front of him in shaking fists, waiting with baited breath for the doctors to tell him whether the woman he loves—has always loved, all along, even underneath the insidious side effects of experimental magic—is going to be okay. Whether she will survive the latest of the countless calamities that knowing him has visited on her.

His phone pings, and he looks down to see a text from Hank.

“Me/Wu on our way. Were coming to help you look. Glad you found her, hope she’s okay. See you soon.”

He almost smiles. After a moment, he texts back:

“Thanks guys. You’re the greatest. See you soon.”

That sent, he leans back in his uncomfortable chair and stares at the ceiling, counting the spots on the tiles slowly in hopes that it will eventually lull him into unconsciousness. He doesn’t know how long he can suffer through being awake while he waits to hear news about Eve’s condition.

* * *

 

Adalind stares down at the text message Nick sent earlier and tries to sort through her conflicting emotions. On the one hand, concern. There is a part of her that almost considers Eve a friend, at times. On the other, annoyance. What was she doing out all night in the first place? Didn’t she realize her Hexenbiest powers wouldn’t be able to protect her?

And cutting through it all, a jealous anger that she tries her hardest to push aside. She doesn’t have time for that right now. Right now, she has to focus.

She looks down at the book open on her kitchen counter. It’s a small, thick volume bound in red leather, one of the ones from her mother’s collection, although rarely used. The spine isn’t even cracked.

It’s no mystery to her why her mother used this book so rarely: Catherine Schade was never one for purely defensive spells. Her protections were always darker, deadlier; as far as she was concerned, protection that didn’t annihilate the threat was incomplete and not worth bothering with.

Running a finger down the page, she mumbles the list of ingredients to herself. They’re simple, and far less disgusting than most of the items in the rest of her mother’s spell book. It’s more or less a very strong tea with some magical properties…the kind of thing Rosalee might cook up at the spice shop. Except she can’t ask for help from that corner this time, because she’s absolutely certain that Rosalee would not approve of what she’s about to do.

* * *

 

Hank and Wu pull into one of the parking spaces in the hospital’s guest lot. Hank turns off the engine, but doesn’t move for a few moments. Wu is equally still beside him.

“You ever think our lives would be simpler if we just didn’t know about any of this stuff?” Hank asks finally.

Wu cuts his eyes over at Hank with a wry grin.

“Yeah, but where would the fun be in that? Anyway, it’s not all bad, is it?”

Hank looks at Wu for a long minute, thinking of everything they’ve been through together.

“Yeah,” he says finally, voice gone soft. “Yeah I guess you’re right.”

As if by mutual silent agreement, they both unbuckle their seat belts and get out of the car, tugging their jackets around them against the chill in the air. Then, shoulder to shoulder, they walk toward the hospital doors.

When they step inside, they immediately spot Nick slumped in one of the chairs near the emergency room doors, asleep. His face looks gray and drawn to Hank compared to how he seemed earlier that morning, and his brow is furrowed in his sleep, as though even his dreams are troubled. Hank goes to his side immediately, leaning down to gently shake his shoulder.

“Hey, Nick, man. We’re here. You okay?”

Nick blinks awake and then sits up, looking from Hank to Wu and back again.

“Hey,” he says. “Has the doctor been out?”

“We just got here,” Wu explains. “Is Eve still with the doctor then?”

“I guess so,” Nick says, face collapsing back into lines of worry. He puts his head in his hands. “You didn’t see her, Hank. She looked so small, and…pale. Like…”

 _Like the other time,_ he doesn’t finish. But he doesn’t have to. Hank saw what Juliette’s death did to Nick. He doesn’t want to see what losing Eve would do to him.

“I’ll go see if I can talk to the doctor, check out how Eve is doing,” he says, withdrawing from Nick and Wu. Nick shoots a grateful half-smile at his back.

“So,” Wu says, “What are you guys gonna do about this magic de-spelling situation? Hank filled me in on the car ride over,” he explains, seeing Nick’s surprised look.

Nick slumps even further down in his chair, looking somehow more exhausted than before.

“Honesty? I have no idea. Before we cast that truth spell, I couldn’t even imagine a world where I didn’t fall in love with Adalind. Now, it seems ridiculous that I ever believed that was possible.”

Wu sits down next to him and gives his shoulder a comforting pat.

“And what about Eve?” He asks gently. Nick’s face crumples in pain immediately.

“I was so terrible to her,” he whispers. “I did this to her…the Hexenbiest powers, H.W.’s brainwashing, all of it. This, too.”

“You were under the influence of some powerful mojo, my friend,” Wu reminds him. “You can’t blame yourself for that.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t exactly fight it, did I? And let’s be honest, Wu. Juliette and I…we were broken long before magic had anything to do with it. All the lies I told her just to make things easier for myself. Brushing her off when she tried to talk to me. Even the way I was so willing to put her at risk to get my powers back. All of that is on me, not Adalind or her magic.”

“Okay,” Wu says reluctantly. “So maybe you have a point. You guys weren’t perfect. But she made choices too, Nick. She chose to love you. She chose to stay when she found out you were a Grimm. She chose to help you get your powers back. And I have never seen someone as in love as the two of you were, even when you disagreed about something.”

“Yeah,” Nick laughs bitterly. “And look where that got us.”

“Funny thing about that,” Wu shoots back. “Ever notice how even when you two were magically programmed to hate each other, that never actually happened? You couldn’t kill her when you had the chance. She couldn’t kill you, either. And all you’ve done since is try to protect each other. She calls your name, and you’re right there. And when you call hers, she always drops everything and comes running. Even when you’re not in love, you’re still one hell of a team.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Nick says. “But Wu…she deserves better. How do I even begin to make all of it up to her? Where do I even start?”

“There’s where my sage advice runs out, I’m afraid,” Wu says, quirking a sad smile. “The longest relationship I’ve ever had is with you and Hank.”

“Well, that’s one for the books,” Nick replies, almost grinning.

“True enough,” Wu says. “True enough.”

Footsteps on the squeaky linoleum of the waiting room floor cause Nick and Wu to turn and see Hank striding up to them, along with one of the doctors.

“Found one for you, Nick,” Hank says, giving his partner a smile. Nick returns it before fixing his eyes expectantly on the doctor.

“Doctor,” he says, the low-key trepidation that he’s been feeling all afternoon kicking up a few notches. The doctor is slight and sharp-eyed in a way that always makes him think _Fuchsbau._ Beneath all his worry he feels a small spike of frustration at the lack of his Grimm powers.

“Mister Burkhardt,” the doctor says primly, keeping the distance between them intact. “I’m Doctor Felin. The good news is Miss Silverton has been stabilized, but I’d like to keep her here a couple of nights for observation, just until we’re certain she’s completely out of the woods. We’ve put her on an IV to help with the dehydration and we’ve got her body temperature back up to normal. Can I ask what happened to put her in this state?”

Nick shakes himself, recovering from the doctor’s casual use of Eve’s old name; of course, Juliette was never buried or officially declared dead; they had floated the story with her friends and coworkers that she and Nick had separated, and she had decided to move to Spain to be closer to her mother’s family. But they couldn’t very well check her into the hospital as merely “Eve” the last time she’d been there, so Juliette it was.

“Uh, she was out in the rain all night last night,” he says. He doesn’t have any lies prepared, so the truth will have to do for now. Or nearly the truth, anyway. “I found her sitting under a tree, unconscious.”

“Why would she have been out in the rain all night?” The doctor asks with a raised eyebrow.

“Honestly? She and I had an argument last night. She was upset, she ran out of the house, I guess she needed a walk to clear her head, maybe she got lost and didn’t have her phone with her. I’m just glad I found her when I did.”

“Yes, it is certainly a good thing you did,” the doctor says, still seeming suspicious of his story. “If she had been out much longer, she might have been in a much more serious state. Does Miss Silverton, to your knowledge, have any history of depression?”

“None that I know of, doctor,” Nick says, trying to hide his surprise at the question. If he’s honest with himself, mental health—his own or anyone else’s—hasn’t been foremost in his mind these last few years. Considering that most medical professionals would consider them all clinically insane if they told the truth about how they spend their time, therapy has never exactly been an option. But with all of the things they’ve been through, maybe that’s something they should have been taking care of all along.

“Can I see her?” He blurts. The doctor’s eyebrows raise another notch, but she merely shakes her head.

“Not tonight,” she says. “I’m sorry, but Miss Silverton needs as much rest as possible. You’re welcome to come back tomorrow; visiting hours begin at 10am.”

“Thank you doctor,” Nick says. He wants to argue; the need to see Eve, to lay eyes on her and make certain that she’s okay, needles at him. But the thought of her face when she left him in the spice shop basement swims in his mind’s eye. He keeps hurting her, over and over.

He resolves that this will be the last time.

“We’ll come back tomorrow. Just…if she wakes up before then, can someone call me? I don’t want her to think we’ve left her all alone.”

Doctor Felin’s expression softens for the first time.

“Of course, Mister Burkhardt. We’ll let you know.”

“Thank you.” He stands up as the doctor walks away, back toward the E.R. doors. “Okay, guys. Thanks for being here, but we should go. I’ll text the others and let them know—“

“I’ll text the others,” Wu interrupts, pushing Nick towards the door. “Go on, go home. Get some rest.”

Nick digs in his heels, pulling away from Wu’s grasp. He works to keep his facial expression in check.

“Right now…I really don’t want to be at home. I’m not…really sure if I’m welcome there,” he admits, his voice dropping.

“Okay then,” Hank says, clapping his hands on both their shoulders and steering them outside. “In that case, Wu, you start texting everyone to update them on Eve’s condition. Nick, you take the back seat of my car; no way are you driving in this state. We’re all gonna go back to my place, and have some much-needed drinks, and order take-out. You can sleep in my guest room, Nick.”

Nick gives him a smile that threatens to be watery.

“Thanks, Hank.”

“Oh, don’t thank me yet,” Hank says, grinning. “While we eat, I’m gonna fill you in on the Bergman case, and you are gonna put that profiler brain of yours to work. Because personally? I’m stumped. And I do not want this guy to walk.”

“Yeah,” Nick agrees, almost smiling for real now. If anything will get his mind off his troubles, it’s a case, and he knows Hank knows that. “Let’s do it.”

“I call shotgun,” Wu declares, rushing ahead of them both, already tapping out a text.

**Author's Note:**

> Some notes on ships (spoilers):  
> This story starts out where canon left off: with Nick and Adalind still together, but clear feelings still there between Nick and Eve.
> 
> As the story unravels, so will the relationship between Nick and Adalind, in a way that seeks to explain how their connection formed in the first place.
> 
> If you're a big fan of Nick and Adalind, you might like the beginning of this story--there are some cute moments between them! But fair warning, you may not like how things turn out.
> 
> Some notes on characters:  
> At least one character in this story will die. Possibly two. I promise it won't be Monroe or Rosalee, or their babies.
> 
> If you want to know beyond that who it is, head over to tumblr and send me an ask (anon or not)! My URL there is the same as my handle here.
> 
> I want everyone who reads this to have a positive experience, so please don't hesitate to ask if you need spoilers for any reason!
> 
> All asks and other info on the story can be found at https://jujubiest.tumblr.com/tagged/the+gentle+sting.


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